![]() Temperatures below 20 degrees Celsius greatly reduce the crops’ growth, and periods of frost kill them. They need constant irrigation and consistently warm weather. Unlike the highly adaptable bee, sugarcanes are tropical plants that thrive under a hot and humid climate. The spread of sugarcane was and still is geographically limited. By the ninth and tenth centuries, plantations were attested in North Africa, Southern Iberia and Sicily, areas that were then under Arab rule. After the Arab conquest of the Sassanid Empire, in the seventh century, sugarcanes were imported to Syria, Palestine and Egypt for cultivation attempts. ![]() Its cultivation originates from South-East Asia and was gradually introduced to the Persian Sassanid Empire, where sufficient irrigation for the canes allowed production. Sugar, like honey, has a multi-millenary history. Sugar, a luxurious commodity, only appeared on their tables in the high Middle Ages.įrom South-East Asia to Europe: The Sugarcane Versatile and readily available, honey was the sweetener of choice for most European people. Because of its antibacterial properties, honey could also serve to make unguents and was used as a topical remedy applied directly to the skin. Let season a month or more before eating.īesides its role in the kitchen, honey’s medicinal properties meant that it appeared frequently in electuaries, that is, in medicinal recipes. Draw out the orange peels one at a time and layer them, sprinkling with ginger powder between each layer, usque in infinitum. If it spreads, it is not cooked but if the drop of honey holds together in the water without spreading, it is cooked. To test whether the honey is cooked, drop one drop of hot honey into a bowl of water. Put them in a pot and cover with honey, and boil over a low fire and skim. After that, bring them just to a boil in fresh water, then spread them on a cloth and let them dry very well. Then soak the peels in nice fresh water for 9 days, changing the water every day. To make candied orange peel, cut the peel of one orange into five pieces and scrape off the pith with a knife. The preparation necessitated sour oranges-an exotic fruit in the Middle Ages, imported from Iberia-and the process of candying the fruits required so much sweetener that it would have been too expensive to make the recipe with sugar. ![]() Nowadays, jams are made with sugar.Īlthough the Ménagier mentions sugar in a few recipes, its writer still preferred to use honey to prepare candied fruits, such as candied orange peel. It is listed in the ingredients of numerous beverages, sauces and jams. In the late fourteenth century Ménagier de Paris, a housekeeping guide written by a Parisian bourgeois for his young wife, honey is omnipresent. The reason is that honey was always much cheaper than sugar. It remained that way even when sugar had become available on the European market. Honey is produced by bees, and bees have been domesticated by humans since at least the third millennium before the common era-over 5,000 years ago! In the Middle Ages, beekeeping was widespread across the globe, although the species of honey bees that were used varied from one area to the other, as did the shape and material of the human-made hives.īecause it was so common and so readily accessible, honey was the main ingredient used to sweeten dishes in Western Europe. Medieval Europeans sweetened their food with it up to the eleventh or twelfth century. Are you hungry yet? Keep reading!īefore delving into sugar production, we shall look at the number one medieval sweetener: honey. Whether they used honey or sugar, medieval cookbooks are chock full of sweet treats and recipes, among which are candied fruits or nuts, marzipan (almond paste), jams and marmalade, cakes and tarts. But even when Europeans gained access to sugar in the High Middle Ages, it was reserved for the wealthy. Have you ever wondered how medieval people sweetened their dishes? In the West, honey was the prime sweetener before the introduction of sugar. ![]()
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