Sweet thoughts
Today I was thinking about sweetness.
I visited one of those shops that specialise in imported food, to check out what they had and to work out if I could use it for teaching. The shop had so much more sweet stuff than savoury that I started thinking about how the colonial foods of each country helped
shift regional cuisines into various levels of sugar in a diet.
The US, for instance, had more sources for sweeteners than Australia from quite early on. australia grew corn, but didn’t use it as a source of corn syrup (I need to find out if the erly US colonists did, to be honest – I might be making assumptions here). There was honey and there was sugar, mainly imported and sourced from cane.
The US around the same time (and if we’re talking about the british colonies in Terra Australis then we’re abolustely tlking about the united States of America – its political adutlhood runs very closely alongside Australia’s early European settlement) had sugar, honey, maple and possibly corn. There might also have been other sweeteners – I’m away from my library today and so I can’t be certain. The minimum number of sources for sweetener, however, are still more than were available in early Australia.
My very subjective feeling is that US food tends to be sweeter than Aussie, by and large. I’d love to know anyone else’s thoughts. Is US candy and chocolate sweeter, on average than that of Australia, or maybe than the British equivalent? Or have I taken too much time off and need to get back to proper history?
March 17th, 2008 at 5:48 am
All’s I can say is that my husband needs to adjust his insulin dosage upwards when we’re back in the States. There’s a numerical, objective measure for you. And it’s really, really easy to put on weight there, even if one keeps one’s portion sizes the same as in Australia. That’s slightly more subjective, but I bet you get lots of anecdotal evidence to corroborate it.
– Laura “yeah, so I grew up eating doughnuts for breakfast, what’s your point?” Goodin
March 17th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
There was a French documentary on SBS last year about the history of chocolate. I remember them saying that American chocolate was sweeter, and that Mars & Hershey had made that taste to suit the local market. There’s a continental store in Fyshwick near Cold Seas. They sell Croatian chocolate there and that’s so full of cocoa powder, it’s a completely different experience of the chocolate we’re used to from the other extreme!
March 18th, 2008 at 4:19 am
I think you’re right - after a friend cycled around the US he complained about the general sweetness of food, including bread. He was vegetarian and was distraught that there were three types of coleslaw in supermarkets: a plain version, a sweet version and a more sweet version…unfortunately the plain version was teeth-achingly sweet to start with.
March 18th, 2008 at 5:20 am
Red, next time I’m in Fyshwick I’m heading straight for that chocolate!
So we know the US has sweeter food (and it doesn’t surprise me). Now all I have to do is see if the links between colonial cooking and modern are strong and sweet. I’ll be teaching the colonial cooking in a few weeks, so maybe I’l keep an eye on recipes then.
March 18th, 2008 at 5:53 am
In the mid-1800s (1830s, if you wish to believe Wikipedia), the US started producing sugar from beets. The US is now one of the world’s biggest producers of beet sugar. That may also be a contribution to our sugar cravings….
March 19th, 2008 at 7:38 am
Beet sugar would have affected quantity available and maybe price, but it didn’t actually add an extra type of sugar into the mix. Beet sugar and cane sugar are almost completely interchangeable in cooking. It may well have accentuated a tendency, but the tendency would have to already have been there.