Source: Flickr the green gal
I tend to do a lot of research when I’m preparing for a book (or report for work or anything like that). I like to make sure I have the big picture fully under control! Which means that I then often have a lot of left over research, which I thought you might find interesting. So over the next few months I’m taking that research and I’ll post interesting features up here…… The first one is on sugar, I love sugar even though its not good for you!
Sugar was without a doubt the taste of the Regency – sweet and in large quantities. This was the first time that sugar became cheaper, before then people relied on honey for a bit of sweetness.
Sugar was now used in almost everything: drinks to pastries, confectionary, jams, sweet breads and cakes. The popularity of tea, coffee and chocolate, with a sugar lump or two, also drove demand for sugar.
Many old British recipes relied on sugar, flour, eggs and cream or butter as the base ingredients, with fresh and dried fruit, walnuts, almonds, wine and spices added to make the sweet buns so typical of the era. The ‘Bath Bun’, a yeast bun sometimes with dried fruit or caraway seeds, was baked in sugar and then sprinkled with sugar.
Moving into the dining room, a Regency guest would not be surprised to find sugar in a chicken dish, vegetables or a pudding (which was usually fat and flower, not necessarily a dessert). Sugar was of course also found in large quantities in the sweet diary desserts, like custards using cream and milk, and jellies also served at the dining table.
But sugar came at a huge cost: sugar was only so widely available due to the Caribbean sugar plantations, like Sir Thomas Bertram’s Antigua properties in Mansfield Park, and their slaves. Sugar needs warmth, lots of land and lots of cheap labour: the West Indies had the warmth and land and cheap labour, well, came from slaves captured by British ships.
During the late Georgian era, the abolition of slavery was a key political debate in certain circles. The anti-slavery campaign achieved some legislative steps to outlaw slavery, from the first step to outlaw slavery in Britain in 1772 then to the prohibition on the import of slaves to its colonies in 1808.
It is questionable though how much this debate was played out in the confectionary and tea shops in town, or at the dining and drawing rooms of a Regency gentleman’s home. Fanny Price in Mansfield Park is willing to learn about Sir Bertram’s West Indies properties.
“But I do talk to him more than I used. I am sure I do. Did not you hear me ask him about the slave trade last night?” [Fanny]
“I did – and was in hopes the questions would be followed up by others. It would have pleased your uncle to be inquired of further.” [Edmund]
“And I longed to do it – but there was such a dead silence! And while my cousins were sitting by without speaking a word, or seeming at all interested in the subject, I did not like – I thought it would appear as if I wanted to set myself off at their expense, by shewing a curiosity and pleasure in his information which he must wish his own daughters to feel’. Mansfield Park
