[MR] Please reply your views

[Lisa and Ken Theriot]

Misha wrote:

[Chocolate is a new world thing and even if it was brought to Europe, it 
wouldn't have sugar since sugar is a new world thing and was probably not 
used in Europe. If I remember correctly, honey was the only sweetener all 
people had access too.]


You do not.  From _A History of Food_ by Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat:

"Around the twelfth century taxes paid on sugar made their first official 
appearance in the records of the South of France.  The civic archives of 
Narbonne tell us that in 1153 a toll on sugar was introduced......  We do 
not know which sort the countess of Savoie preferred in 1273, but the 
accounts of her household mention the sum of two gold sous and five silver 
deniers for a pound of sugar....  After Acre and the loss of Syria in 1291, 
the Christians who had withdrawn to Cyprus probably had time to bring some 
suckers of the cane in their baggage..."


and so forth.  MANY medieval recipes call for sugar, often nauseating 
amounts of it.


As for coffee, from the same book:


"The first European to mention coffee is Prospero Alpino of Padua.  In 1580 
he went to Egypt, then under Ottoman rule... he mentions coffee: 'The Turks 
have a brew, the colour of which is black.  It is drunk in long draughts, 
and not during the meal, but afterwards...as a delicacy and in mouthfuls, 
while taking one's ease in the company of friends, and there is hardly any 
gathering among them where it is not drunk.'"


_I'm_ willing to go to Egypt for coffee.


And drinking chocolate:

"Whether because of the chilli, ambergris and musk added to it or not, no 
one liked his first mouthful of chocolate.  Then they became used to the 
drink...  After Cortez had gone home in 1527 he always kept a full 
chocolate-pot on his desk.  The first concern of missionary nuns in Central 
America was to use their culinary gifts to convert chocolate to 
Christianity.  They thought, correctly, that it was diabolical only because 
of the spices and flavourings added to it.  They replaced them with 
vanilla, sugar, and cream, and the result was delicious.  In 1585, the fame 
of Moctezuma's brew had spread so far through Europe that the first cargo 
to reach land from Vera Cruz was snapped up at once, despite the high 
price.  Pope Clement VIII did drink a cup of cocoa in 1594; it...was his 
task to resolve the grave question of whether or not drinking chocolate 
broke the fast.  Not only did Spanish ladies of both the colonies and the 
mother country have such a passion for cocoa flavored with cinnamon that 
they drank it all day long, they even had it served to them in church..."


Fritter-type things go back at least to Demosthenes (350 BC), so everyone 
can have the beignets, the people with wealthy Spanish personas can have 
the chocolate, and the Italians and Arabs can have the coffee.... Or we can 
all partake of the wonders of other cultures as befits a Holiday Faire.


Adelaide