The modern “C.D.S.” brand “Crack” was first used in reference to “Sugarcane” before “Cocaine”.
“Hard candy is nearly as hard to define as it is to chew. In the United States, the term describes a wide variety of sweets, including drops, fruit lozenges, peppermints, lollipops, sour balls, candy sticks and canes, and rock candy. Familiar American brands like Life Savers, Necco Wafers, Tootsie Pops, Boston Baked Beans, Red Hots, and Lemonheads use hard candy techniques boiling sugar to the “crack or “hard crack” stage to create specialized tastes.”
Source: The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets
“Although almonds, candied fruits, marmalade, capers, and ostrich feathers also appear in the English records, Willan estimates that through the mid-1570s sugar “seems always to have constituted some 85 per cent of such imports by value.”872 Documents on Morocco from this period show that Moroccan sugar went overwhelmingly to England, as opposed to Spain, Portugal, France, or the Low Countries.”
“But in the midst of all of this, English merchants had been doing some business, finding there a market for their cloth and ready supplies of the sugar that is said to have destroyed Elizabeth’s teeth.But let’s get back to Morocco where, in the 1570s, trade took a new and interesting turn. Sugar had, as we know, long been the overwhelming mainstay of English imports, in chests, loafs, barrels of unrefined, and tons of molasses. It had been supplemented by almonds, goatskins, aniseed, capers, candied citrus peel, raisins, and ostrich feathers,”
Source: Thomas Dallam 2: The Anglo-Moroccan Relationship Thomas Dallam, Script
“Experimentation with sugar syrup was ongoing. A sort of cookie called aqras mukallala was glazed by dipping it into very thick syrup, and a new variety of lauzinaj was virtually the same as modern nougatine (sugar cooked without water to the hard crack stage, then stirred with almond paste. Hard candies (aqra slimun) had been invented and were colored red, yellow, or green, like lemon drops or life savers.”
Source: The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets
“The Moors transmitted the Middle East’s knowledge of sweets to Europe during their occupation of Spain (717-1492) and Sicily (827-1224), starting with the culture of the sugarcane. Lauzinaj spread under a new name, makhshaban, giving European words for this product, such as Spanish mazapan and English marzipan. Along with knowledge of syrup the Moors passed on the technique of candying. A third-century Damascus cookbook titled Kitab al Wusla ila al-habib gives a recipe for for puff pastry under an Arabic name (muwarraqa) and a Spanish one (folyatil), both meaning “leafy,” which suggest that puff pastry might have been a joint invention of the Moors and the Spanish.”
Source: The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets
“The Spanish had small sugar plantations on the Madeira Islands, which were a way station between Spain and the New World. When they brought sugar to the New World, it exploded. Sugarcane was brought into an environment in which it goes gangbusters. Sugar was a scarce commodity. Cane sugar in tea, cookies, and crumpets was unheard of 500 years ago. It was only a plaything of the rich and famous. Its appeal then is analogous to that of cocaine now. An incredibly valuable commodity imported from a faraway tropical location. But the Caribbean changed all that. By providing this commodity en masse, the Caribbean was the single region that changed the dietary consumption through the entire planet for the next 500 years.”
Source: The Plaid Avenger’s World By John Boyer
“But in the midst of all of this, English merchants had been doing some business, finding there a market for their cloth and ready supplies of the sugar that is said to have destroyed Elizabeth’s teeth. It’s hard to say how long exactly they had been doing this, but one important date is 1551, the year of Thomas Wyndham’s first voyage. Unfortunately, little can be said of this trip save that it seems to have been a success, for he was soon back again, the following year. This second journey apparently resulted in the trade of a “good quantity of linen and woolen cloth, coral, amber, jet, and diverse other things well accepted by the Moors,” and in the loading of the ships with “sugar, dates, almonds, and molasses.” But let’s get back to Morocco where, in the 1570s, trade took a new and interesting turn. Sugar had, as we know, long been the overwhelming mainstay of English imports, in chests, loafs, barrels of unrefined, and tons of molasses. It had been supplemented by almonds, goatskins, aniseed, capers, candied citrus peel, raisins, and ostrich feathers, but in 1572 a new product was explored: potassium-nitrate, otherwise known as saltpetre, and a necessary ingredient in the making of gunpowder.”
Source: Thomas Dallam 2: The Anglo-Moroccan Relationship Thomas Dallam, Script
“Sugar was a big business, a big deal. The point I am trying ti make about sugar’s impact on the Caribbean is this: When it became popular, everyone wanted to plant it everywhere, it was the crack cocaine of its day. It’s awesome; it gets great prices. People will pay anything for it. You can make buckets of money on it. However, as I suggested, it is very labor intensive. The plantation owners need lots of labor, and cheap labor is preferable. Cheap labor? How about free labor? Guess what that means? That’s right: slaves. “Hey guys, let’s enslave the local population! It’s the perfect solution! They tried. But most of the natives, as I pointed out in the Mexican section, died of European imported disease. It virtually wiped out everyone in the Caribbean before they even saw white dudes. The few that were left over got worked to death in very short order. Basically, the colonizers virtually wiped out the native populations of the Caribbean islands. So the colonizers were on the lookout. “We need more labor. Where are we going to get them? You already know the story. They found out that they could bring people over from Africa. This set up what is called the Triangle Trade.”
Source: The Plaid Avenger’s World By John Boyer
“1452: Start of the ‘sugar-slave complex’. Sugar is first planted in the Portuguese island of Madeira and, for the first time, African slaves are put to work on the sugar plantations.”
“Mendes’s chapter thus emphasizes the connections between the Portuguese expansion in Morocco, the beginnings of the slave trade in Senegambia and the growing use of slaves in the Atlantic islands with the beginning of the sugar economy around 1525. The fact that commercial companies shared so much with others which were more clearly military in character underlines the idea that all these associations were to some extent based on the Christian discourse on fidelity (fidelitas).”
Source: From Al-Andalus to the Americas 13th-17th Centuries
“At first sugar was used as a medicine, but gradually came to be regarded as a luxury, and was partaken of only at special feasts. From Arabia through Egypt and finally by the Moors, sugar cane was introduced into Spain and the countries north of the Mediterranean Sea. In the fifteenth century cuttings were sent by the King of Portugal for planting in Madeira and Canary Islands. From the latter country the sugar cane was introduced into Brazil early in the sixteenth century, and then into the West Indies, principally in San Domingo. It was not introduced into the American Colonies until 1750 at which time an unsuccessful attempt was made, to make sugar, in Louisiana. In 1791, however, the sugar boilers were more successful. ”
Source: The source, chemistry and use of food products By Edgar Henry Summerfield Bailey
“The sugar-cane, though at one time extensively cultivated, is now practically unknown in Morocco–whence it was formerly exported to Europe–the province of Dukalla being in those days known as Blad es-Sukkar, “the sugar country.” Idreesi speaks of the sugar of Sus, for which the district was famous, as the best in the world. Tarudant owed its early importance to this lucrative trade, and Agadir was coveted as the port of its shipment. Mills were built by Europeans, and Christian slaves were employed in its manufacture in the sixteenth century. A more attempt to revive the business I called to mind by the ruined sugar mill erected in the fifties for the Sultan by an English engineer, at the extreme point of the Agudal park at Marrakesh. Another product of bygone day was cotton, of which Idreesi says enough was produced round Tadla to supply all the Maghrib; and indigo was extensively grown in the Dra’a. Rice, too, has been and is still grown in the neighborhood of Fez, but whatever quantity of these three may now be raised, it is insignificant, as foreign importations have altogether superseded the native articles, except possibly in the far interior.”
Source: The Land of the Moors: A Comprehensive Description By Budgett Meakin
