HISTORY OF SUGAR

Evening Star, Issue 20555, 6 August 1930, Page 12

HISTORY OF SUGAR

4 USED THROUGH THE AGES ■ dirrti"- ' many people know anything of jffie history of sugar/ and when it became a necessary part of the world’s fssd ? The word ‘ sugar” comes from ifie old French “ zuchre,” and it is denied from the Persian “ sukkur,” which may probably be traced to tho Sanskrit “sarkara.” to various authorities, sugar has been known to India since a very early period and the Chinese -seein to have obtained their knowledge * of it from that country. In several of the Old Testament mention na made, of “ sweet caluraus,” which £was possibly a species of sugar-cane, lileroaotus speaks of manufactured ‘honey, which probably was what we &ow know by the name sugar, and •-Theophrastus mentions honey obtained 1 I’from,. a reed which had a sweety root, j'and, grew in damp places in Egypt. {{ln Pliny one reads of a kind of honey, from reeds in a white gum*9ike mass,, which was very brittle to ‘“the teeth. Sweet canes were found in '-Syria by the Crusaders; these were ’jcalled“zucra.” By heating the plants iJfche juice of these reeds was obtained, jSafter which it was strained and set ‘■but in bowls until it had hardened into foamy white mass, and then, after ‘Being mixed with bread and water, it /was eaten. As early as a.d. 900 sugar was imported i into Venice; then in small, “quantities into Northern ‘ Europe, {generally from Egypt and Sicily. The ‘Moors of Spain obtained the cane from "Egypt and the Spaniards from the 'Moors. In the. fifteenth century it was introduced by tho Spaniards into the Canary Islands, and by the Portuguese into Madeira". Then it was carried to the Brazils and the "West Indian lslands. It is believed that Haw- ■ kinT"was the first to bring sugar into England. He brought it from the West Indies about 1560; but.it was only in the-nineteenth century that sugar came to begenerally used in Great Britain.