Sugar

Sugar cane was first cultivated in India more than 2000 years ago. In the seventh century, the Persians set up sugar refineries, and it is from their word for it, ‘sakar’, that we get the English name. Sugar, like spices, reached the Western world via the Arab trade routes, and when it first appeared, was considered an exotic and prohibitively expensive commodity, often called ‘white gold’. Until the eighteenth century when sugar cane from the West Indies became more plentiful and less expensive, food was sweetened with honey, fruit syrups and maple syrup.