Sweet Debates in Seventeenth-Century Barcelona

Abstract

Scholarly interest in early modern sweets has focused on the central role of these food products as markers of social distinction and conspicuous consumption in elite contexts, mainly centred on northern Europe and Italy. Less fully understood are the ways in which the increasing demand for sugar and sweets informed their production and marketing at local levels, in particular in non-courtly urban areas. This article examines the legal case against the baker Josep Cortés, accused of making and selling sponge biscuits in violation of the privilege of confectioners in late seventeenth-century Barcelona. It addresses how confectioners and bakers materially and discursively defined their products based on the use of certain ingredients, utensils, and skill. This article also illustrates a shift from a generic idea of sweetness to one which was explicitly linked to sugar in the period when sugar was becoming a semi-affordable commodity in Europe. By addressing diverse source materials including court records, printed cookbooks, handwritten recipes, and inventories, this case study exemplifies the significant material and cultural dimensions that sugar adopted during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

From Panocha to Fudge

“…Iberian cooks, influenced by Arab traditions, developed their own repertoire of egg-based custards such as flan and candied oranges, pears, and other fruits. The fullest investigation of early modern Iberian confectionery, by the historian Marta Manzanares Mileo (2018Mileo ( , 2021, has demonstrated the centrality of flour-based pastries such as bocadillos (little bites) and the absence of anything resembling fudge. Fondant, although somewhat similar to fudge, in that they are both grained confections, is a particularly unlikely antecedent to panochita de leche given that it spread only in the nineteenth century, following the controlled synthesis of glucose and its adoption by confectioners (Mason 1998: 73).…”