Synopses & Reviews
The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets is the most ambitious and eclectic reference work of its kind, a sweeping collection of nearly 600 entries on all things sweet, written by 265 expert contributors. Its coverage begins with the human proclivity for sweetness, an attribute shared by nearly all mammals. From the simple image of a baby smiling when tasting sweet foods, the Companion continues across many thousands of years and around the globe many times, affording glimpses deep into the brain as well as stratospheric flights into the world of sugar-crafted fantasies. More than just a compendium of pastries, candies, ices, sweet preserves, and all manner of confections, this work explores the notion of the sweet as one that has brought richness to our language, our art, and of course, our gastronomy.
Readers expecting to find entries on the history of candy, the evolution of the dessert course, and the production of chocolate will not be disappointed. But the Companion also includes less-well-known material that may offer a sense of discovery and delight. Readers will learn about "sugar of lead" (lead acetate), prescribed for stomach troubles in the nineteenth century, and about castoreum (beaver extract), beloved by the modern food industry for the sweet taste it imparts. An entry on bird's milk, an Eastern Europe candy, tells how its name reflects its physical scarcity during Soviet era shortages (obtaining a box of these candies was a coup nearly as unlikely as milking a bird). Unexpected facts abound.
The Companion celebrates the allure of sweetness, but it also recognizes the darker aspects of our enthrallment with sugar, beginning with the inseparable links between sugar and slavery. The triangular trade of slaves, sugar and rum, the punishing labor in the sugarcane fields and the sugar plantations themselves, and the exorbitant riches of the sugar barons are explored in detail. The damage continues in the child labor used in harvesting cacao beans; in the sugar-heavy diet that undermines health in African American communities; and in the stereotypes still associated with certain forms of sweets. The Companion shies away from none of these difficult subjects.
Besides the 600 A-Z entries that comprise the main body of the text, each of which is signed by the contributing author, the Companion includes several other fascinating essays. It opens with a preface by the legendary anthropologist Sidney Mintz, whose Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History was the first serious study of sugarcane in relation to economics and colonial power. Editor-in-Chief Darra Goldstein then unpacks in the introduction her thought process that led this project to grow to six hundred entries on the human predilection for the sweet from every possible angle. The Companion concludes with an extensive index and four appendices: on sweets in cinema, museums dedicated to sweets, the world's best pastry shops, and on songs that are in some way constructed around sweetness.
This book is absolutely indispensable for anyone who has a sincere desire to learn the (sometimes troubled) histories of sugar, sugarcane, and all foods sweetened for human enjoyment. But all that is really required is an openness to explore its wondrous variety, like a kid in a sweet shop.
Synopsis
A sweet tooth is a powerful thing. Babies everywhere seem to smile when tasting sweetness for the first time, a trait inherited, perhaps, from our ancestors who foraged for sweet foods that were generally safer to eat than their bitter counterparts. But the "science of sweet" is only the beginning of a fascinating story, because it is not basic human need or simple biological impulse that prompts us to decorate elaborate wedding cakes, scoop ice cream into a cone, or drop sugar cubes into coffee. These are matters of culture and aesthetics, of history and society, and we might ask many other questions. Why do sweets feature so prominently in children's literature? When was sugar called a spice? And how did chocolate evolve from an ancient drink to a modern candy bar?
The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets explores these questions and more through the collective knowledge of 265 expert contributors, from food historians to chemists, restaurateurs to cookbook writers, neuroscientists to pastry chefs. The Companion takes readers around the globe and throughout time, affording glimpses deep into the brain as well as stratospheric flights into the world of sugar-crafted fantasies. More than just a compendium of pastries, candies, ices, preserves, and confections, this reference work reveals how the human proclivity for sweet has brought richness to our language, our art, and, of course, our gastronomy. In nearly 600 entries, beginning with "
About the Author
Darra Goldstein is the Willcox and Harriet Adsit Professor of Russian at Williams College, having earned her Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Stanford University. She combines her love of literature with a passion for food studies, a field she helped pioneer by founding
Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, which has been called a culinary
New Yorker for its incorporation of photography, poetry, and art alongside thoughtful articles on all aspects of the foods we eat. She serves as the Series Editor for California Studies in Food and Culture (UCAL Press) and the Food Editor for
Russian Life magazine. Goldstein is also a prolific author who has written or edited thirteen books, including four award-winning cookbooks.
Table of Contents
Foreword (by famed anthropologist Sidney Mintz)
Introduction (by Editor-in-Chief Darra Goldstein)
Topical Outline of Entries
The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets
Appendix: Films
Appendix: Museums
Appendix: Pastry Shops
Appendix: Songs
Directory of Contributors
Index