Sugar-Plums and Sherbet: The Prehistory of Sweets

The original hardback gained universal praise; ‘A fascinating account’ said the TLS; echoed by national and local press; ‘A fascinating book full of off-beat information’, wrote Derek Cooper. This book looks beyond the brilliant colours of the sweet-shop shelf and consider the ingenuity of sugar boiling and the manufacture of those intriguing avatars of childhood happiness: the humbug, the gobstopper, the peardrop and the stick of rock. As well as a history, it is also a recipe book, with twenty tried and tested methods for sweets ancient and modern. Who has not wondered how they got the marbling into humbugs and the fantastic patterns into Just William’s gobstoppers? The byways of knowledge that are illuminated make this so rewarding. Did you know how they got the letters into rock? How they twisted barley sugar? The difference between fudge and tablet? The connection between humbugs and an Arab sweet from 13th-century Spain (where it was borrowed it from the Persians)?