Country

If the aristocracy and bourgeoisie of the Hapsburg cities sipped tea, coffee, and chocolate, consulted cookbooks that told them how to cook in the latest Italian or French fashion, and could avail themselves of pastry shops selling ice cream, bonbons, and every other fantasy that expensive cane sugar could elicit, the country folk lived in a very different world of sweetness. Up until the industrialization of sugar beet production in the second half of the nineteenth century, and even a generation or two beyond that, sweetness came from two primary sources: honey and fruit. See fruit and honey.