? Sugar is a common condiment and food in daily life. Let's talk briefly about how long the history of eating sugar in the East and the West is.

The earliest places to grow sugarcane in the world are ancient India and the Middle East. There are many kinds of gardens that can make people eat dessert for three meals a day. All kinds of modern fancy desserts, such as sweet fruits, jams and jellies, originated in the Middle East.

More than 3,000 years ago, people in China ate honey and fruit as desserts. When they accidentally discovered that germinated grains could be boiled into syrup, they had a syrup made of rice, millet and barley malt.

In the 4th century BC, Qu Yuan mentioned "Zhejiang pulp" in "Evocation of Chu Ci", which is sugarcane juice.

? The "sugarcane can" mentioned in the "Three Kingdoms" is a kind of thick sugarcane juice.

Ji Xianlin said: "In ancient China, there was no word' sugar', only one word' glutinous rice', which refers to things like maltose. ...... Probably the word' sugar' appeared in the Northern and Southern Dynasties. "

Before the Tang Dynasty, western businessmen brought "western-style stone honey" to China, which was easy to carry and tasted good. Because it looks like sand after mashing, it is also called "sand sugar". There is a great difference between ancient "sand sugar" and modern sugar.

In 647 AD, that is, in the twenty-first year of Zhenguan in the Tang Dynasty, Emperor Taizong sent people to India to study sugar-making technology. In 66 1 year, that is, the first year of Longshuo, Tang Gaozong, Indian experts made exquisite sand candy with bamboo retort method, which was called "sarkarā" in Sanskrit and translated into "Shaqiling" in Chinese.

It is recorded in Sugar Frost Spectrum that during the Lunar New Year, a monk named Zou taught Sichuan craftsmen to make white and sweet sugar with frost appearance, also known as sugar ice and rock sugar.

With the popularization and improvement of sugarcane sugar-making technology, brown sugar has become a good tonic after boiling.

In the Yuan Dynasty, sugar makers from Arabia taught Fuzhou sugar makers the "tree ash sugar refining method" to make more refined white sugar.

During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, China's sugar-making technology went up to a higher level, and invented the "yellow mud water leaching decoloration method" to produce white and meticulous fine white sugar, and extracted rock sugar on the basis of white sugar, which was exported to many countries and regions such as Asia, Africa and Europe. White sugar in Bengali and several Indian languages is called cini sakara, or "China sugar".

With the improvement of sugar-making technology, various candies, such as fragrant candy, lion candy, flower candy, chewing gum candy, sesame candy, hammer candy, waxberry candy, peanut candy, pine nut candy, crisp candy, kwantung candy and rose candy, have enriched China people's snacks.

Flavoring sugar includes white sugar, brown sugar, single crystal rock sugar, polycrystalline rock sugar and borneol sugar.

In modern times, China introduced western-style candy making methods, and the types of candy were more diverse. The best-selling 6 1 year "white rabbit toffee" was formerly a toffee made in Britain. In the era of material shortage, white rabbit toffee is not only a rare delicious snack, but also a precious nutrient. It is widely said that a glass of milk can be made of seven white rabbits.

In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, Japanese Naokawa came to Fujian to learn how to make brown sugar and sent it back to Japan. 1662, the Japanese government sent envoys to China to collect sugar-making methods and materials, and to learn how to make white sugar and rock sugar in Fuzhou.

Japan imported sugar from China until the Meiji period. After the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, Taiwan Province Province, an important producer of sucrose, was occupied by Japanese, and sugar-making technology began to develop rapidly and entered the international market.

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Let's start with the history of eating sugar in the west. The time for sucrose to enter Europe does not exceed 1000.

Ancient Rome was the richest and most powerful country in Europe at that time, and there was no concept of sugar. They eat honey and fruit for dessert, and the sweetness in bread and snacks also comes from honey and juice.

European Crusaders arrived in the Middle East, where they first saw sugar. They called this unheard-of seasoning white salt (salt is white ...), brought it back to Europe and began to grow sugar cane in the Mediterranean.

In the hundreds of years in the Middle Ages, sugarcane was not widely planted in Europe, so there were not so many dazzling desserts in Europe at that time, and there were not even royal nobles. Snacks were patties.

During the Renaissance, a large number of sweets became popular in Italy. Even meat and vegetables are added with sugar, and cooking with a lot of sugar is a sign of the rich.

They made sculptures out of sugar and studied thousands of desserts. Cakes and biscuits are common. At the banquet of the French prince, napkins, forks and tablecloths can all be made of sugar, which can only be described in one word: local tyrants.

Catherine of medici family married King Henry II of France. As an Italian chef, she brought the method of making desserts to France, but it was not until the19th century that French cuisine became popular in Europe.

That is, during the Renaissance, desserts became popular in European diets. All kinds of desserts, which used to be enjoyed only by the upper class, gradually entered the civilian class with the development of economy.

? I want to mention chocolate here. It has been a beverage for more than 300 years since Columbus brought it from America to Europe. 1847, the Englishman Joseph Frye made the world's first solid chocolate, and chocolate finally changed from a drink to a candy.

? The baking of western pastry is inseparable from sugar, white sugar (coarse sugar, ordinary sugar, fine sugar, superfine sugar and young sugar), cotton sugar, powdered sugar, icing sugar, brown sugar, maltose, honey and xylitol.

? Western-style candy mainly includes candied petals, candied orange peel and candied fresh fruit. With fruit as raw material, many kinds of sweets can be made, such as apple, strawberry, pineapple hard candy, citrus lollipop and raspberry soft candy, and fruits and chocolate can also be mixed together to make sweets, such as cherry truffle chocolate. Other sweets include coffee candy, milk candy, nougat, almond candy, caramel, and all kinds of delicious raw materials.