Product Description

It is a truth universally acknowledged that everyone loves sweets. However keen we might be on fine cheese, vintage wine or acorn-fed Iberian ham, much of the time we'd be happier with a Curly-Wurly. But why do we like sweets so much? Why is there such an enormous variety of types, a whole uncharted gastronomy in itself? And where do they all come from? Many of the sweets we recognize today have a lineage going back hundreds of years. Sugar was first transported around the world with the exotic herbs and spices used by medieval apothecaries. By association, the confectioner's art was at first medical in nature and many sweets (such as aniseed balls, which were a medieval cure for indigestion) were originally consumed for reasons of health. Other sweets came in-to being in the worlds of ritual and magic. Chocolate, for example, was mixed with chilli and used as a libation by the Aztecs. It subsequently appeared in other rather more palatable drinks around the world, but not in the solid form we now recognize until about 150 years ago. But the special significance of a gift of chocolate remains ...Whatever their manifold origins, sweets are still a feature of every human society around the world. Tim Richardson's book tells the extraordinary story of comfits and dragees, lozenges and pastilles, sherbets and subtleties. Like a box of chocolates, it's something you can just dip into - or scoff all at once.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #146817 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Guardian, Tom Jaine
'Richardson has pulled countless plums out of this lucky dip of a subject.'

The Guardian, Tom Jaine
'Sweets opens suprising doors on to history. Richardson has pulled countless plums out of this lucky dip of a subject.'

Sunday Herald
'A truly delicious history, his homage to the humble sweet is a lovingly detailed account that can't be resisted.'

Customer Reviews

Sweet Pleasures
Sweets: A History of Temptation; by Tim Richardson

This is a delightful book, combining erudite and painstaking research worldwide with an exuberant enthusiasm for, and an ability to describe the taste and texture of, his chosen subject - sweets of all kinds, from aniseed balls to gobstoppers, from crystallised fruits to rhubarb & custards. Mr. Richardson has a rare quality of making us aware of his own preferences whilst giving a straightforward account of the infinite variety of sweets, as the final course of an elaborate feast in the middle east or as a sneaky comfort to a tired commuter in the European west. The style is witty, the facts intriguing, and the whole mightily entertaining. I loved it.
On the serious side or for those who think sweets are frivolous there are chapters on the social revolution wrought by the Quaker chocolate giants of eighteenth century Britain, on the medicinal uses of certain ingredients, and one chapter,"Bad Candy", on the controversies and criticisms, the passionate put-downs of the anti-sweet brigade.
The form of the book is charming with short Lucky Dip sections on such things as liquorice, chewing gum and rock, inserted between chapters, so that the reader may dip into oddments when he does not feel up to the (quite remarkable) history of the sugar industry.
Keep this book by your bedside and eat it a piece at a time or gorge yourself on it, marvelling at the wealth of trivia, and at the devotion and scholarship of the "world's first international confectionery historian"!

Love this book - only drawback is no free samples...
The author states in the prologue that he is the World's first confectionary historian. Well, he is certainly a delightful one and his book is written with such enthusiasm that I found myself almost able to taste the lovely sweets he described. If only it had been sold with free samples for each chapter! Tim Richardson has 'studied' (and munched upon) sweets from every part of the world and this book is just the most enjoyable way to share his journey.

I'm going to try and track down some of the sweets he mentions, just so that I can share in his findings. I heartily recommend this book and hope to meet the author(would be let down if he isn't surrounded by bowls of sweets) at some book event. Somebody give this man a few sets of spare teeth and a website where we can all order the various delights he has tempted his readers with.

History of Temptation
For anyone who though that sweets were a thing of the past and a bit childish this book will fill you in the fascinating history of sweets. How little things have changed! How old do you think hundreds and thousands are or the kit-kat or sherbet? Lots of good facts that everyone will like.