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Sweets: A History of Candy Hardcover – January 1, 2002

4.7 out of 5 stars 26

It is a truth universally acknowledged that everyone loves sweets. However keen we might be on fine cheese, vintage wine or acorn-fed Iberian ham, much of the time we'd be happier with a Curly-Wurly. But why do we like sweets so much? Why is there such an enormous variety of types, a whole uncharted gastronomy in itself? And where do they all come from? Many of the sweets we recognize today have a lineage going back hundreds of years. Sugar was first transported around the world with the exotic herbs and spices used by medieval apothecaries. By association, the confectioner's art was at first medical in nature and many sweets (such as aniseed balls, which were a medieval cure for indigestion) were originally consumed for reasons of health. Other sweets came in-to being in the worlds of ritual and magic. Chocolate, for example, was mixed with chilli and used as a libation by the Aztecs. It subsequently appeared in other rather more palatable drinks around the world, but not in the solid form we now recognize until about 150 years ago. But the special significance of a gift of chocolate remains ...Whatever their manifold origins, sweets are still a feature of every human society around the world. Tim Richardson's book tells the extraordinary story of comfits and dragees, lozenges and pastilles, sherbets and subtleties. Like a box of chocolates, it's something you can just dip into - or scoff all at once.

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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury Pub. Ltd. (UK); 0 edition (January 1, 2002)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 392 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1422359832
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1422359839
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.4 pounds
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 out of 5 stars 26

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Tim Richardson
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Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
26 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2024
Fun read... lots of information about candy that I did not know about.
Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2023
I decided this year to buy my two nieces backpacks and then fill those backpacks up with little gifts that I found for them. Aria has been going through a massive candy phase (due to her having braces) and I just so happen to take my responsibility as an auntie extremely seriously (as one should) she's been having a blast learning more about the history of candy!
Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2017
This book is a fascinating history of "sweets" (or candy, as we would say in the U.S.). Written in a lively and entertaining style, it provides interesting facts about both the human love of sweets and specifics about particular types of candy. (It made me wish I had a bowl of candy at my side as I was reading it.) I would have given it five stars, but the Kindle version is riddled with annoying typos (e.g., swreets instead of sweets, Jake instead of fake, 1 instead of I, etc.). Still worth the read though!
3 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2017
Great- thanks!
Reviewed in the United States on November 25, 2002
American candy names have their own sweet, maybe cloying, attractiveness: divinity, Tootsie Roll, Slo Pokes, or Goo Goo Clusters. In _Sweets: A History of Candy_ (Bloomsbury) by Tim Richardson, you will find these, but you can also find Scottish curlie murlies, gundy, and soor plooms (sour plums); Australian Fizzoes, pollywaffles, and Freddo Frog Chocolate Bars; and candy with a more-or-less international appeal, such as Cowpats which are shaped like you-know-what. Tim Richardson has, in researching and writing this book, transformed himself into the world's first international confectionary historian, a designation he frequently, with self-deprecating humor, bestows on himself as he tells us about his efforts on our behalf. It's a wonderful post for him. He begins his book, "My grandfather worked for a toffee company. My father was a dentist. So I have always had strong feelings about sweets. But I have never been confused. I like sweets. I like them a lot." The enthusiasm shows on every page.
This is not a recipe book. Though many of the candies might be made at home, Richardson concentrates on manufactured sweets, and the recipes for them are deeply guarded secrets. Candy is so complicated that it is virtually impossible to copy a sweet exactly without inside information. Not only the recipes are closely guarded, but the machines and processes, too, and often Richardson didn't get a peep. But when he did get admitted to a factory, he was delighted: "...every time I entered one I was delirious with joy, ecstatic that the machines were exactly as I hoped they would be." Comparisons with Willy Wonka's factory are unavoidable. Richardson covers the long association of sweets and medicines; often in the past apothecaries and confectioners had bitter rivalries. It was not simply that "a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down;" sugar preserved medicines and helped bind pills together. Shaping sweets into fanciful statues has a long tradition. The Duke of Albemarle a couple of centuries ago commissioned a tower of sugar eighteen feet high, inhabited by gods and goddesses; it was too tall to get into his banqueting room. These days we have more modest gingerbread houses adorned with candy for the holidays, but marzipan, sugar, and spun sugar used to be carved into ornate sculptures of windmills, temples, and ruins to make table decorations.
There are countless sweet plums pulled out here, amusing details about a universal human interest produced with the sort of good humor that the subject deserves. Richardson's puns are actually worth savoring; in a section on the eighteenth century's low price of sugar and high price for handmade sweets, he tells us "A good confectioner could make a mint." Richardson has informed us of his own favorites here, in a happily personal book of international history, and the boiled sweet known as Rhubarb and Custard is his top choice. "It is said that on his deathbed, the novelist Aldous Huxley called for a dose of mescalin, the hallucinogenic drug. If ever I find myself in a similar situation I will not call for mescalin. No, a quarter of rhubarb and custards will suffice."
13 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2003
Tim Richardson's "Sweets: A History of Candy" is an extraordinary overview of confections from all over the world, and all through recorded history. He covers every continent (with special attention paid to the Brits and the Americans, who both have an enormous national sweet tooth) and every conceivable type of candy, from milk- and cream-based confections to those which have their foundations in nuts and fruits to those commonly enrobed in chocolate and beyond.
There is apparently nothing which cannot be made somehow into a sweet. Richardson reports that in India, "sherbet" is made from ground-up chickpea powder, sugar and baking soda. The Maoris, in the early part of the 19th century, commonly ate fern root "moistened with treacly brown sugar crystals from the pith of the . . . cabbage palm" and the Turks, known throughout the civilized world for the sheer breadth of their confectionary offerings, make pastries and nutmeats with the most fabulous names: lady's navel, glad eyes and sweetheart lips are but among a few.
Along the way, Richardson never fails to fascinate and inform. He tells us that writer Roald Dahl was told in childhood that licorice whips were made from rats' blood, tying this into other candy myths like the 1970s-era one about Bubble Yum being filled with spider eggs. Richardson has even managed to unearth some true-life horrific candies, such as "Kelly-in-a-Coffin," a popular 19th century sweet molded like, well, a baby in a coffin (more acceptable, apparently, when infant mortality was a more everyday part of life).
Despite the occasional unnecessary pomp (Richardson is overly fond of referring to himself in print as "The First International Confectionary Historian"), this sweet book is a special treat for anyone interested in either candy or history--or both!
8 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2015
It's a good book with full information.Each home need it.

Top reviews from other countries

Dr Bill
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 13, 2017
No problems.
jonnie r.
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 11, 2017
Very interesting
Pannonia
4.0 out of 5 stars Photos needed
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 20, 2012
This is an excellent, highly entertaining and informative book on the history of sweet-making and well worth reading. The few grammatical errors do not detract in the least - these exist in practically all books.

What IS very disappointing, however,is that there are no photographs at all - even a few line drawings or some copyright-free engravings of sweet-making entrepreneurs would have added to the pleasure of reading. And a book predicated on nostalgia cries out for photos. I bought this book for my partner who refused to read it once he realised there were none whatsoever - he wanted to be reminded of what Black Jacks, Sherbert Dabs etc used to look like. And, in principle, I think any book on the history of its subject needs the inclusion of photographs. Shame on the publishers for that.
10 people found this helpful
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Brian 101
5.0 out of 5 stars A good book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 12, 2016
Very entertaining and interesting.