Servers, Sugar

Appears in
Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets

By Darra Goldstein

Published 2015

  • About

servers, sugar, are necessary tools for the table, since sugar is used to adorn desserts and sweeten beverages. Over the years, as the forms of sugar have changed, so have the implements designed to serve it. An early place to store sugar on the table or sideboard was the sugar box, which was succeeded by the sugar bowl, and then the sugar caddy, primarily used to hold sugar for beverages. Sugar was retrieved from these boxes and bowls by means of nips or snips, scissors or tongs. Other early tools included casters or sugar sifter spoons used to shake sugar over fruit or other confections. In more recent years, sugar has been provided inelegantly at the table in simple paper packets or tubes, especially in restaurants.