Candy canes

Why are some candies associated with Christmas? Hundreds of years ago sugar was very expensive. It was a food of the wealthy. For other people, it was a special treat saved for holidays (Christmas, Easter) and other special occasions (weddings, christenings). Many of these traditions remain today. About candy.

Food historians tell us that hard candies (sticks, losenges, etc.) were originally manufactured for medicinal purposes. This idea survives today in the form of cough drops. Confectioners were quick to recognize the popularity of hard candy, in its various forms. Before long, hard candies of all sorts of shapes, sizes, and flavors were produced for "recreational" purposes.

"The concept of sugar as medicine probably came from the tradition of Moslem physicians. They came from a culture which knew and used sugar...That sugar was an expensive and exotic luxury, used medicinally by the subtle and learned Arabs, probalby helped reinforce medieval European ideas of its intrinsic goodness. There were pleny of ailments in northern Europe for which sugar was considered suitable treatment--coughs, colds, chest infections, agues. The Christ allowed that sugar was medicinal (St. Thomas Aquinas himself apparently considered and pronounced on the subject), which meant it could be legitimately nibbled during Lent, probably adding to its appeal. It is no coincidence that our earliest information about pulled-sugar sweets in Britian, using the very word penides that travelled all the way from the Orient, comes from compilations of medicinal formulae, not elegant books on fine confectionery. A description of pulling sugar was written down about 1500 in the York manuscript, under the title To make penydes...The art of pulling sugar was evidently well understood 500 years ago..."