1920’s Sugar Etiquette

A Second Début Article from 2019

Observing proprieties has become a national obsession. Everybody’s doing it. Etiquette used to be confined to paper-covered hand books. Now it is applied to everything—even sugar.

New Rules for Housewives in Latest Sugar  Etiquette 

Observing proprieties has become a national obsession. Everybody’s doing it. Etiquette used to be confined to paper-covered hand books. Now it is applied to everything—even sugar. There are distinct rules for the use of sugar and the careful housewife is going to see that they are obeyed. ‘‘But it really is not proper” will floor all disputants who are tempted to use sugar the wrong way.

Take granulated sugar for example. It should be used for baking, cooking, sweetening and candy-making, but it certainly should not be used for iced beverages or for coffee, yet lots of women do not understand this. As a matter of fact, powdered sugar is the proper sweetening for iced beverages, and powdered sugar should also be used on fruits and cereals and for dusting pies and cookies.

There seems to be considerable common sense in sugar etiquette after all.

As for hot coffee and tea and cocoa and chocolate, that is where tablet sugar comes in. One really ought to make a table of sugar rules and hang it in a convenient spot on the kitchen wall. It would keep the housewife posted on what sugar to use in her cooking and also what kinds to put on the dining room table and when. 

It would be convenient to consult the rules when making an icing and learn that confectioners sugar was proper for that and for fondants, or it would be just as convenient to glance at the rules and discover that brown sugar was for baked beans, ginger bread, candied sweet potatoes, all kinds of tarts and cakes and for sprinkling on the children’s bread. There seems to be considerable common sense in sugar etiquette after all. – Calexico Chronicle, 1922

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia  

Sugar Etiquette in Jane Austen’s Era

When entertaining guests with afternoon tea, sugar and milk are essential to the properly set tea table. — Socially conscious Georgian and Regency era tea drinkers would either refuse sugar in their brew or only drink their tea with non-slave trade, East India Sugar. — Above are Georgian era sugar tongs: “These early scissor-shaped sugar tongs resembled candle douters, with loop handles and scrolled stems, terminating in wide, flat, shell-shaped claws for holding the sugar.”

“The introduction of coffee, tea, and cocoa into Europe provided the well-off with an alternative to alcohol for the 1st time in history. Chocolate drinking, coffee houses, and afternoon tea all acquired a gentility far removed from ale house bawdiness, and became 1st a luxurious amenity, then by the 4th quarter of the 17th century a middle-class necessity. But all 3 were crude, often bitter, and unconsumable, it was said, without sugar. From about 1680 the fashion for these hot drinks became a potent factor in the surge in sugar demand and consequent increased production, which progressively raised the sugar trade to the point of importance which it had assumed by 1700.During the 2nd half of the 18th century the temperance cause developed into an important social movement, initiated by various Protestant denominations and therefore strongest in northern Europe, in countries such as Britain and the Netherlands. 

“Sugared tea became the respectable alternative to beer or wine long before water was safe to drink without boiling. These changes in social habits significantly increased the demand for sugar and were probably responsible for about half of the increased trade. Socially conscious tea drinkers would either refuse sugar in their brew or only drink East India Sugar. The ingenious wording of a certain English china ware-house’s advertisement for sugar basins in the early 1800s exploited the contemporary wave of liberal thinking: ‘East India Sugar not made by Slaves,’ the pots were printed, thus enabling the purchaser to display his conscience publicly. ‘A Family that uses 5lb of Sugar a Week,’ the advertisement continued, ‘will, by using East India instead of West India, for 21 Months, prevent the Slavery, or Murder, of one Fellow Creature! Eight such Families in 191⁄2 years will prevent the Slavery, or Murder of 100!’” — from “Sugar and the Slave Trade,” H. Hobhouse

In the Georgian era, lumps of sugar, cracked from the loaf with steel sugar nippers, were lifted from sugar bowl to tea cup, with the aid of sugar tongs. The earliest reference to this constituent of the silver tea-equipage appears in W. King's cookery book, published in 1708. These early scissor-shaped sugar tongs resembled candle douters, with loop handles and scrolled stems, terminating in wide, flat, shell-shaped claws for holding the sugar.

The scissor design long retained its popularity and, as with scissors themselves, included the stork design of the third quarter of the eighteenth century. In this the tongs resembled a long-beaked stork, consisting of two long has joined together by a rivet forming the bird's eyes and serving as a pivot the body was shaped and chased to resemble wing feathers and the legs ended in circular loops for the fingers. — “1500-1820: Three Centuries of English Domestic Silver,” by Bernard and Therle Hughs, 1952

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia©️ Etiquette Encyclopedia

Sugar Etiquette History in the US

 “Observing proprieties has become a national obsession. Everybody’s doing it. Etiquette used to be confined to paper-covered hand books.”– After WWI, world beet sugar supplies were very low, while cane sugar production was increasing, leading to tariffs on sugar. 

New Rules for Housewife in Latest Sugar Etiquette 

Observing proprieties has become a national obsession. Everybody’s doing it. Etiquette used to be confined to paper-covered hand books. Now it is applied to everything—even sugar. There are distinct rules for the use of sugar and the careful housewife is going to see that they are obeyed. ‘‘But it really is not proper” will floor all disputants who are tempted to use sugar the wrong way.

Take granulated sugar for example. It should be used for baking, cooking, sweetening and candy-making, but it certainly should not be used for iced beverages or for coffee, yet lots of women do not understand this. As a matter of fact, powdered sugar is the proper sweetening for iced beverages, and powdered sugar should also be used on fruits and cereals and for dusting pies and cookies.

There seems to be considerable common sense in sugar etiquette after all.

As for hot coffee and tea and cocoa and chocolate, that is where tablet sugar comes in. One really ought to make a table of sugar rules and hang it in a convenient spot on the kitchen wall. It would keep the housewife posted on what sugar to use in her cooking and also what kinds to put on the dining room table and when.

It would be convenient to consult the rules when making an icing and learn that confectioners sugar was proper for that and for fondants, or it would be just as convenient to glance at the rules and discover that brown sugar was for baked beans, ginger bread, candied sweet potatoes, all kinds of tarts and cakes and for sprinkling on the children’s bread. There seems to be considerable common sense in sugar etiquette after all. – Calexico Chronicle, 1922

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Both Sugar and Slavery Shunned

 

Sugar in novelist Jane Austen’s England: Sugar chests with locks were popular in 18th century Regency Era home furnishings of the wealthy. ~ Above, image of an antique sugar chest from Pinterest.

Because it was so costly, sugar was kept locked up in the 18th century. It was sold in many grades, from the highly refined, pure white sugar that only the well-off could afford, down to the darkest of brown sugars used by the poor. Granulated sugar had been only recently invented and was not yet widely available. Sugar was molded into large, cone-shaped loaves weighing several pounds each that had to be broken up or grated before the sugar could be used. Sugar cubes would not be invented until 1843 – if people wanted sugar for tea, they had to first break it into irregular lumps with special tools called ‘sugar nippers,’ from which practices comes the traditional question “One lump or two?” ~ Bernadette Petrotta, Polite Society School

Sugar scuttles, servers and a cone of sugar ~ Sugar was molded into large, cone-shaped loaves weighing several pounds each that had to be broken up or grated before the sugar could be used.

Regency Era "tea time” varied according to the time of day and type of foods to accompany one's tea.  The High Tea, or “meat tea,” was more of an early evening meal. It would have been accompanied by hot dishes like cottage pie, shepherd’s pie, or baked fish or other savory dishes with  root vegetables. The Afternoon Tea, or “low tea,” did not become the fashion until the early 1840s.  

Concerned Regency Era women like Barbara Spooner Wilberforce, (depicted by Romola Garai in the movie Amazing Grace), boycotted sugar in an attempt to end the British slave trade.

For a time however, sugar in one's tea, or anything else for that matter, became very unfashionable across every segment of society. In Britain, women were very influential in the anti-slavery movement. Many authors in this time period emphasized the connection between British daily life and that of slaves. Famous poet, Robert Southey, spoke of tea as “the blood-sweetened beverage,” and Sir William Fox urged the tea drinker to “As he sweetens his tea, let him…say as he truly may, this lump cost the poor slave a groan, and this a bloody stroke with a cartwhip.” 

At a time when many citizens could not vote, the sugar boycott provided the underrepresented with a chance to act when Parliament had yet to do so. Isaac Cruikshank’s “The gradual abolition of the slave trade: or leaving of sugar by degrees in 1792” embodies the outcry against the consumption of slave-produced sugar in England

By 1791, according to Thomas Clarkson, an English abolitionist and leading campaigner against the slave trade in the British Empire, no fewer than 300,000 Britons had abandoned the use of slave-produced sugar in the West Indies. As Clarkson conducted his travels, he reported that there was no town through which he passed in which there was not one person who had stopped using sugar.

Quakers were at the forefront of the movement to boycott goods produced by slave labour in not only England, but the U.S. In 1824 Elizabeth Heyrick from Leicester in England wrote a pamphlet entitled “Immediate, not Gradual Abolition or An Inquiry Into the Shortest, Safest, and Most Effectual Means of Getting Rid of West Indian Slavery” which sold thousands of copies in Britain and the USA. She and many other women, many of whom were Quakers, believed that a boycott of sugar, one of Britain’s major imports, would help to make people aware of the suffering of slaves.

Some people used sugar from East India during this period. There were sugar bowls and other items produced which stated that the sugar a hostess or host was serving, had not been produced by slave labour. It seems that those who forsook sugar came from all classes and age groups within society. 

Inspired by her, women’s societies put out boycott pamphlets and started to compile a national list of all those who had given up West Indian sugar. Conditions in the plantations in which the slaves worked to produce sugar were appalling. Together with Susannah Watts she canvassed large areas of Leicester and promoted a boycott of sugar produced in the West Indies. By the following June almost a quarter of the town’s population had given up sugar. A few people used sugar from East India and there were sugar bowls and other items produced which stated that the sugar had not been produced by slave labour. It seems that those who forsook sugar came from all classes and age groups within society. – Compiled by Bernadette M. Petrotta and Maura J. Graber

 🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia