Sugar-plums and Sherbert

The hardback edition of this book was published in 1998 and gained universal praise: A fascinating account said the TLS; echoed by national and local press; A fascinating book full of off-beat information wrote Derek Cooper.

Sugar-plums and Shebert looks beyond the brilliant colours of the sweet-shop shelf and considers the ingenuity of sugar boiling and the manufacture of those intriguing avatars of British childhood happiness: the humbug, the gobstopper, the peardrop and the stick of rock. As well as a history, it is also a recipe book, with twenty tried and tested methods for sweets ancient and modern.

There have been quite a number of studies of modern-day sweeties and candies, and their immediate antecedents. This goes further back than that, tracing development from sugar’s first appearance in Britain in the late Middle Ages. It is as much a study of sugar and its historical place in the western diet as it is a history of sweets.

Illustrated throughout with contemporary prints and drawings.