FSogol's 2018 Advent Calendar Day 13: While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads... WHAT?

[FSogol]

The line from Clement Clark Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas," a.k.a. "Twas the Night Before Christmas" (1823) goes:

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads...

Sugar Plums are also mentioned in Act Two of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Ballet. In the Land of the Sweets, containing Marzipan, Chocolate, and Candy Cane, the Sugar Plum rules the kingdom in the absence of the Prince.


A label on a box of sugar plums with an early (1868) picture of Santa in his underwear.

What the heck are sugar plums?

What they’re not, annoyingly enough, is sugar-coated plums. According to candy historians and the Oxford English Dictionary, a sugar plum is a comfit—that is, a seed, nut, or scrap of spice coated with a layer of hard sugar, like the crunchy outer case of an M&M. In the 17th century, popular innards for comfits included caraway, fennel, coriander, and cardamom seeds, almonds, walnuts, ginger, cinnamon, and aniseed. Tiny comfits—“hundreds and thousands,” “shot comfits,” or nonpareils”—were made by sugar-coating minuscule celery seeds; “long comfits” were sugar-coated strips of cinnamon bark or citrus peel.

Comfits are thought to be one of the world’s oldest sugar candies. They most likely started life as medicine, devised by Arab apothecaries as treatments for indigestion, and were brought to Europe via Genoese and Venetian sugar traders. The Tudors ate them as stomach-settlers at the end of their sizeable meals, along with a glass of spiced wine.

Comfits were tricky to make. The sugar coatings had to be gradually built up over time, first adding sugar syrup with a special funnel (called a “pearling funnel” or “cot”), then shimmying the candies in a hot pan. This process-called “panning”—had to be repeated for hours or days on end, until up to 30 layers of sugar had been added to the mix. Comfits, since they were massively labor-intensive, were pricey. Sugar plums were originally snacks for aristocrats. Early comfits also tended to be lumpy. The perfect comfit was the work of a skilled, patient, and possibly lucky confectioner. The process was so difficult that trade secrets were strictly guarded. A rare survival are the instructions published by Sir Hugh Platt (1609) on “The arte of comfetmaking,” who spills the beans on techniques and recipes. (“A quarter of a pound of Coriander seeds, and three pounds of sugar will make great, huge and big comfets.”) Today panning is performed mechanically, which is how we get uniformly round jawbreakers and smoothly oval jellybeans and Jordan almonds.

“Sugar plum,” these days, is an obsolete word, which seems a shame considering its versatility in its 17th- to 19th-century heyday. In the 17th century, to have a “mouth full of sugar plums” meant that you spoke sweetly, but might have a deceitful hidden agenda; in the 18th century, “to sugar plum” was a verb, meaning to pet, fawn over, or make up to. In the 19th century, “plum,” all on its own, came to mean anything delightful and desirable—hence Tchaikovsky’s Sugarplum Fairy in the Nutcracker ballet.

More at https://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/the-plate/2014/12/23/visions-of-sugarplums/

Confectionery historian Laura Mason calls comfit-making "one of the most difficult and tedious methods in craft confectionery, requiring specialized equipment, careful heat control, and experience." Depending on the size of the finished product, a batch could take several days to complete. Not just anybody could make these candies. Until the advent of machine innovations, comfits or sugar plums were a luxury good, most likely to be found in an aristocrat's pocket or between courses at a banquet.

SNIP

I don't know what exactly Clement Moore had in mind when he imagined sleeping children's heads full of "visions of sugar plums." Was it a specific confection or a more general notion of sweetness? The lasting power of his poem suggests that it doesn't really matter. Even today, when the original referent for sugar plum has faded into the historical mists, we still recognize its meaning: the excitement, the pleasure, the childlike wonder of Christmas, all in the shape of a little sugar plum.

More at https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2010/12/sugar-plums-theyre-not-what-you-think-they-are/68385/


(For an explanation of my advent project and a link to last years posts, see
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10181152160 )

[lark]

1. So timely!

I actually have wondered about this, and now I know the answer is what the heck is a sugar-lum anyway?

Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays, whichever you prefer.

[FSogol]

2. Thanks, any holiday greeting is ok by me. Hope you have a great holiday season too. n/t