The history of confectionery is very long. Sweets first appeared in Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece and the Middle East, and then in Italy, quickly spreading around the world due to their unsurpassed taste.
The first to enjoy the taste of candy were the ancient Greeks and Egyptians. The very first candies are considered to be those of Ancient Greece, which were made from honey and a variety of fruits. In Egypt, dates were the main component of these sweets. The confectionery art itself emerged and developed in Venice, Italy, only with the advent of sugar in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Until then, sweets in Europe were bought from the Arabs, the oldest confectioners in the world, who had known sugar since 850. It is no coincidence that the world’s most diverse sweets are still made in the East, in Arab countries and Iran. At a time when confectionery was developing in Europe in the direction of cakes and cookies, the Arabs were the first to notice that cooking or melting sugar opens up great opportunities for making a variety of sweet, dessert, confectionery and dishes.
The first sweets that people in our area learned to make were honey-based products, and then sugar and sugary substances. The first gingerbread, then called honey bread, appeared around the ninth century; it was a mixture of rye flour with honey and berry juice, with honey accounting for almost half of all other ingredients. Later, local herbs and roots began to be added to honey bread, and in the XII-XIII centuries, when exotic spices brought from India and the Middle East began to appear on our territory, they were also added. Then they began to cook fruits and berries in sugar. Some peoples got them ground, turned into mashed potatoes, others only crushed, and others in the form of juices.
Since the 19th century, confectionery production has been actively transforming from a handicraft, artisanal business into an industrial, factory-based one. This was facilitated by the emergence of domestic industrial production of sugar from beets. Kirchhoff’s discovery of a method of producing starch molasses also played a positive role. During the Civil War, the confectionery industry declined. Its recovery and renewal began in 1922. Ten years later, the Confectionery Industry Research Institute was established. Its employees began to actively study the processes underlying the technology of confectionery products of various types, as well as to develop mechanized and automated methods of their implementation.
Candied fruit means juice in Latin. In fact, candied fruits are pieces or parts of berries, fruits or vegetables that have been boiled in sugar syrup and then dried. This is the way candied fruits are made in the East. This method allows you to preserve fruits and vegetables without spoilage in hot climates. However, the tradition of preserving fruits in honey existed as far back as the ancient Romans in the first century AD. In the eighth century, candied fruits came to southern Europe – they were brought by Arabs who set out to conquer new territories. But it was only in the XIV-XV centuries that the first written references to candied fruit appeared. They gradually gained popularity: at first, they were served as candy at banquets or treated to noble guests, and later they were used in baked goods and desserts.
Marmalade is a confectionery product with a gelatinous structure made from fruit and berry puree or an aqueous solution of gelling agents (pectin, agar or gelatin), sugar and other ingredients. There are several types of marmalade: jelly, fruit and berry, jelly and fruit, and chewing marmalade.
There are several versions of the origin of the modern concept of “marmalade”. According to one of them, this word came to us from Germany (translated from German, the word “Marmelade” refers to a special technology aimed at thickening the product). The first marmalade was made in the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean during the Crusades: Greek confectioners evaporated and thickened fruit juice in shallow metal containers that were placed in the sun.
Since ancient times, our ancestors have been enjoying a fragrant pastille made from grated sour apples mixed with honey and stewed in an oven. The favorite folk delicacy was also honored in the royal chambers. Over time, egg white was added to make the pastille more tender and get rid of its rusty apple color. The royal version of the marshmallow was served at the court of foreign guests, and among them, the “grandmother of marshmallows” was very popular. The French especially adored it and even tried to find out the recipe. But it, like many others, was kept under the strictest secrecy, so the French had no choice but to come more often.