Sweets & Confections

Sweetness came from honey long before it came from sugar — the rock painting at Cuevas de la Araña shows a honey harvest 8,000 years ago. Sugarcane was domesticated in New Guinea and carried west, and India learned to crystallize its juice into transportable sugar by about 500 CE. Confectionery as a craft follows that crystal: once sweetness could be stored and shipped, it could be shaped.