The bitter truth about our love affair with sugar
I’ll never be able to look at another medlar fruit in quite the same way again. Not since the demure-looking food historian Dr Annie Gray brought in a bowlful of ripe medlars in Sweet Makers: a Tudor Treat (BBC Two) and invited her fellow contributors to have some “open a--e fruit”. To much guffawing.
Candied medlars were one of many culinary curiosities (happily, the nickname refers to the fruit’s appearance rather than its digestive effect) prepared in this new series in which four confectioners and two historians entered a Tudor kitchen to explore the bittersweet story of 17th-century Britain’s obsession with sugar. Certainly such outbursts of bawdy Tudor humour lifted the enjoyment level of a show that balanced its seriousness of intent with fun particularly well.
Who knew, for instance, that chewing on candied eryngo root was the Tudor equivalent of popping a Viagra pill, and what toil went into producing such wonders as Oranges Preserved in the Portuguese Fashion (from Sir Hugh Plat’s 1606 recipe book Delightes for Ladies). Or, for that matter, the incredible effort needed to make exotic flavour-bursts like fennel and coriander seeds coated in upwards of 50 layers of sugar and spice, for the tables of the Elizabethan elite.
If the story’s sweetness emerged naturally through the confectioners’ (cake designer Cynthia Stroud, sweet consultant Andy Baxendale and chocolatiers Diana Short and Paul A Young) efforts to get to grips with the very basic cooking methods and kitchen equipment of the times, then the bitter element focused on sugar’s role as a primary driver of the 17th century slave trade and its key role in making Britain a global superpower.
As outlined by social historian Emma Dabiri, the contrast between the enjoyment of this seemingly innocent pleasure at home, and its horrific human cost on the plantations of the West Indies (and its legacy of racism down the centuries) was as sharply drawn as it could be, without being laboured.
Such knowledge certainly put the confectioners’ difficulties in, say, extracting Hannah Woolley’s 1661 marchpain (or marzipan as we know it) from an intricate Elizabethan mould, into perspective. But it was amusing to watch them struggle. And being shown the near-instant negative impact sugar had on Elizabethan dentistry and oral hygiene also gave pause for thought. In the end, what emerged alongside the fun and the facts was a surprisingly strong sense of the hidden, extraordinarily complex and highly political history this most innocent-seeming substance can have.
On the final leg of Joanna Lumley’s India (ITV), the actress smiled all the way from Delhi to the Dalai Lama (“I want to ask him about the meaning of life, and what we should be doing and – well, just everything!”). Taking in some tiger spotting and trying-out some callcentre work along the way, she finished up in the troubled paradise of Kashmir and its capital Srinagar, where she was born.
At every stage it was Lumley’s open enthusiasm, strong family connection with India (her parents returned to the UK in 1947 but generations before them served the empire on the subcontinent) and, above all, her effortless ability to charm everyone she encountered that made this more enjoyable than the average celebrity travelogue.
Throughout the series Lumley has avoided the obvious tourist traps and so it was again here, taking us to see the Humayun Tomb in Delhi – a less familiar sight than the later Taj Mahal, and where her father just happened to propose marriage to her mother. Throughout the series she hasn’t shied away from the many less savoury aspects of life in India, either, such as lingering caste discrimination and the crushing poverty that persists despite its vast economic wealth. An encounter with some of Delhi’s hundred thousand homeless people reduced her to tears, such was their generosity even in penury.
It was a touching moment. As was her audience with the Dalai Lama, at Dharamshala in the foothills of the Himalayas, which clearly meant a great deal to Lumley as her grandfather, Lesley Weir, had been a friend of the previous Dalai Lama. She gave him the gift of a drone; he chatted, flirted a little, and answered her enquiry as to what we should try and direct our lives towards: love and compassion. Really he should have added charm to the list. Because if Lumley is any example, that particular virtue can take you a long, long way down the road to happiness.
The Sweet Makers: a Tudor Treat ★★★★
Joanna Lumley’s India ★★★★