Perhaps the story should have ended there. The delights of sugar were largely in control of the rich, it’s true, and their patronage of an exclusive ingredient meant that its identity was bent to their showy, needless ideas of extravagance. Instead of feeding the poor, the malleable carbohydrate was turned into a medium of edible and ornamental sculpture. Banquets were eaten off plates spun from sugar. Master confectioners perfected the art of sugar boiling and produced trees and elephants and even crackling tablecloths out of lowly cane syrup.
“Obviously it was overkill,” says Elizabeth Abbott, author of Sugar: A Bittersweet History. “For the very rich who had money to waste, sugar was the perfect form of conspicuous consumption. And if a little was good, then more, more, more was really good.”
I want myself a sugar Eiffel Tower..