THE SWEET LOWDOWN OUR ENDURING OBSESSION WITH CANDY
Susan Benjamin owns several stores called True Treats Candy that specialize in historical candy products, including treats created by Aboriginal Peoples. She has now written a history of candy, Sweet as Sin: The Unwrapped Story of How Candy Became America’s Favorite Pleasure. Our conversation about her new book has been edited for length. Jennifer: The idea of candy in North America really started with indigenous fruit — cranberries and blueberries, for example. I was surprised to find that peaches weren’t natural to this continent and they changed the way people ate.
Susan: When you go through the supermarket, there is very little that exists as it originally was. You have to remember the honeybee didn’t get to North America until 1622. The peach came here in the 1500s with the explorers. They flourished, in part, because native Americans created orchards. Fruits that were indigenous to North America, the strawberry and the blueberry, were changed by the European-Americans trying to create a more salable commodity. We sell, in our historic candy shop, fruit from the Ojibwa tribe, the highbush blueberry and cranberry. You can really taste the difference.
Native Americans used all parts of the corn and one good example is corn syrup, and that was used long before the Europeans came. The other corn product would be the corn cob. We sell corn-cob jelly in our shop. Native people would take various parts of the corn and use it as candy.
Jennifer: You write about the chefs who created candied treats for their employers, but your description of George Washington suggests he was a terrible boss, especially to his poor chef Hercules!
Susan: Washington was considered relatively good to his slaves. Most of the founding fathers had slaves, except for John Adams. Hercules is an amazing example because he defeated the system by escaping and staying escaped. When George Washington lived in Philadelphia, which allowed slaves to become free after living in Pennsylvania for at least six months, he would often send his slaves back to Mount Vernon in Virginia, which was a state that had the largest number of slaves in the early United States.
Hercules wanted to be his own man. Word got around to George Washington that Hercules wanted to be free, so he sent him back to Virginia and had him do arduous work in the fields. He did that to break Hercules’ spirit so Hercules wouldn’t think of escaping. Hercules did escape, but Washington did everything in his power to get him back. He posted notices; he offered Hercules the opportunity to come back as a free man.
I believe the main reason for slavery was cane sugar. Huge numbers of workers were needed to produce the cane. So when you talk about candy you have to address the lives of the African Americans. It is really so dire and so horrendous, and I started seeing them as survivors rather than victims. They survived these unbearable circumstances. It made me see my nation in a different way, and that many of these people were unsung inventors in the world of sugar and they need to be honoured and celebrated and admired.
Jennifer: We all understand that chocolate was part of a soldier’s rations, but I didn’t understand how important it was during wartime.
Susan: Candy and sugar were always important to the armed forces. By World War II, it was a given that candy would be in the rations. But it became a problem. The military began to wonder, “how do we get these guys not to scarf down these candies?” The chocolate bars, beyond the sugar, were important sources of food, especially when supplies were short. If the chocolate bar was eaten all at once, there was a shortage of food when men were stranded on the battlefield.
The military went to the Hershey Co. and they asked if the company could make a bad-tasting candy bar because they didn’t want the soldiers to eat the chocolate all at once. The Hershey Co. invented what was called a D ration bar. The soldiers hated it and even when they were starving they complained about the D ration. But it worked as a food supplement.
Jennifer: You describe the Hershey family as “Waltons” but note that the Mars family, creators of the famous fluffy chocolate bar, were fractious, much like the family on that TV show, Dallas.
Susan: The father and son did not get along at all and the father wound up kicking the son out and sending him to Europe. They were famously at odds. Unlike other huge candy companies, Mars is still family-owned. They have a vast empire that goes beyond candy and the family is still together. They are very secretive but they do a lot of good work.
Jennifer: I was amused that Cracker Jack really wasn’t familiar until the famous baseball song, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” was written in the early 20th century.
Susan: It was free advertising for Cracker Jack. Pure accident and pure serendipity. Cracker Jack was really just caramelized sugar on popcorn and peanuts. It wasn’t well known. At that time there were many small regional candy makers and Cracker Jack was among them. When the song came along, it launched them to a national level. Marketing then became really important in promoting a product.
Jennifer: Most of us are candy holics. But you have made a living studying it and selling it in your historic candy stores.
Susan: Candy stories are so rich and so deep — from a national, political and human rights level. The story of candy is very much about love. I know that sounds corny but this is how people have expressed love to each other all through time. It was listening to people’s stories about candy that drove me to write this book.