The Sweet History of Sweets

The earliest sweet which people have eaten since prehistoric times was honey. The origins of confectionery can be traced back to about 2000BC to the ancient Egyptians who made sweets by combining fruits and nuts with honey. The Romans, Greeks and Chinese made sweets with sesame seeds. The Aztecs in Mexico used the cocoa bean to make a bitter drink over 3000 years ago. This drink was sweetened with sugar after 1500 years.

In the middle Ages, sugar candies became very popular. Only the rich could pay for sweet food as the price of sugar was very high. In that time, rich people ate desserts like preserved, jelly and dried fruit and wafers made from batter.

In the Middle Ages doctors have learn how to mask bad taste of medicines. They have been mixed them with sugar and from the beginning of the twentieth century many ozenges, gums and pastiles that served as throat soothers, stomach warmers or healthy energy givers were made.

Eventually, the combination of sugar and cocoa set the confectionery story alight. Chocolate was drunk in Central America before 500 AD. In 1502, Cortez, the Spanish conqueror of Mexico, brought cocoa and the chocolate drink back to Spain. The addition of sugar in this drink made it more palatable, but it took almost another hundred years for the new drink to reach the rest of Europe. The first shop for selling drinking chocolate was opened in London in 1657. In the late 17th century the rich began eating chocolate ice cream. Until the 19th century chocolate was only for drinking not for eating. Joseph Fray made the first chocolate bar in 1847. Then, in 1875, Henry Nestle and Daniel Peter invented milk chocolate.

The candy history and its development took off in 1800's. Cheaper price of sugar and advancement in mechanization made easier to mass manufacture the confections and for the first time they were available to all people. By the 1850s, there were hundreds of confectionery factories in the United States. The very first sweets included boiled sweets, marshmallows, and one of the very earliest was Turkish delight. The first candy bar was introduced in Britain by Joseph Fry in 1847. In 1900 Milton S. Hershey invented Hershey's Milk Chocolate. In the 20th century many new kinds of sweets were introduced, such as Tablerone (1908), Milky Way ( 1923), Snickers (1930), Mars bar (1932), Bounty (1951), Twix (1967)...