Are Sweetmeats Indispensable?

We use them in fruitcake and Twelfth Night Cake. We put them in Preacher’s Pie and mincemeat. We shred them up and add them to gingerbread. We eat them as candy, as in Glacé Fruits or Marmalade of Quinces. These are foods preserved in sugar—dry, like crystallized ginger; sticky, like candied citron; or wet, like cherries in syrup. All of these are sweetmeats and indispensable to Christmas cookery. We do not appreciate today the difficulties once involved in making them, not that there wasn’t occasional rebellion.