Back To Work: Confectioners

July/summer ( TBC)

BBC TWO

Today, we take it for granted that we can have a sweet treat whenever we wish, but it wasn’t always thus. Go back to the Tudor and Stuart eras, and sugar was a luxury, a preserve of the rich. How did this change come about?

It’s a question explored in a new three-part living history series that finds four modern confectioners recreating recipes from the past. Overseeing their efforts and offering interesting context are historian Dr Annie Gray ( Victorian Bakers) and social historian Emma Dabiri ( Back In Time For Brixton).

The first show sees the quartet working as servants at Haddon Hall in Derbyshire. In the 16th and 17th centuries, we learn, sugar was imported from the Islamic world, and from the Spanish and Portuguese empires, although that would change with the establishment of plantations in the Caribbean. This, of course, means that the history of sugar is inextricably linked with slavery.

It wasn’t easy cooking with sugar when you had to prepare dishes on a primitive charcoal stove. Nonetheless, via medlar fruit, a natural Viagra, the group arrive at a point where they’re able to serve a sweet feast where the centrepiece is a banqueting house made entirely of sugar.

The second episode covers the Georgian era. From a confectionery shop in Bath, it tells the story of how merchants and the middle classes began to enjoy confectionery, which was cheaper now because of imports from the West Indies. Jellies, made partly from calves’ feet, ice cream and boiled sweets are all on the menu.

The final episode, set in a small sweet factory and shop in Ironbridge, Shropshire begins in 1875 and ends in the 1930s. These were years when confectionery became a mass-market industry, and the show includes the tale of how Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles made their way into the world.