What to watch
The Sweet Makers: A Victorian Treat
BBC TWO, 8.00PM
They’ve already had a taste of being skilled servants to the Tudor elite and running a fashionable confectionery emporium in Georgian-era Bath. Now, in the final part of this richly flavoured series, the four confectioners (cake designer Cynthia Stroud, sweet consultant Andy Baxendale and chocolatiers Diana Short and Paul A Young) enter the burgeoning world of mass production in the Victorian era.
Once again they’re accompanied by food historian Dr Annie Gray and social historian Emma Dabiri who guide us through the societal and technological changes that enabled this to be the first era when ordinary working people could afford to buy sweet treats. And when the market opened up to an entirely new consumer base, children, it made fortunes for not only big sugar refiners like the Tate family but also new giants on the scene such as Fry’s, Cadbury’s and Rowntree’s. Even with the new machinery and artificial colours and flavours of the 1870s, producing sweets on industrial scale proves an uphill challenge for the four confectioners but the results – mint drops, rose rock, barley twists, fruit pastilles and much more – look as mouthwatering as ever. Gerard O’donovan