Sweets

Rating:
Summary: Delicious!
Review: Ahhh, what a book. From its scrumptious cover to its last tasty page, I devoured this book, and didn't even worry about what it would do to my teeth. Or my waistline. Tim Richardson's boyish exuberance shines through on every page. I would like to meet him and share some chocolate with him.

On second thought, I'll keep the chocolate to myself.

The only thing I didn't like about this book: it could have used some illustrations. Or perhaps a sampler of some of the candies Richardson describes in loving detail.

Rating:
Summary: A Delicious International History
Review: 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."

Rating:
Summary: A Delicious International History
Review: 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."

Rating:
Summary: An extroardinary overview of candies the world over
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: An extroardinary overview of candies the world over
Review: 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!