Food For Thought: A Meta Feast by Grundy

Dessert - Sugar in Middle-earth

Do the people of Middle-earth have a sweet tooth? We don’t have much to base our knowledge on in the First or Second Ages, but The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings give glimpses of the food of late Third Age Middle-earth, including sweet dishes and desserts. Among those are included various types of cakes (including seed cakes and honey-cakes), various fruit tarts, biscuits, fruit jams, bread with honey, and fruits both fresh and dried (including apples, blackberries, and wildberries).

While these dishes and desserts are mentioned, there is nothing to help us deduce how sweet they actually were, or how much sugar may or may not have been used in making them. Arguments could be made that little to no added sugar was used for the fruit dishes. But in the case of the jam, it is reasonable to suppose some form of sugar was available to the jam-makers – most English jam recipes from the mid-1800s on include some form of added sugar.

Where did the sugar used in Middle-earth come from? Many people think first of cane sugar when they think about where sugar comes from. However, in Middle-earth we cannot assume cane sugar was the primary source of sugar, or even available in all regions.

Producing sugar from sugar cane requires a warm temperate to tropical climate. So while it might conceivably be grown in southern regions of Middle-earth (Harad and beyond), cane sugar would probably not be the first choice sugar in the latitudes of Gondor and further north. The same applies to palm and coconut sugars. While these sugars might be imported, by the time such sugars reached a region like the Shire, they would command a premium price given the distance and risk involved. However, several other potential sugar sources come to mind.

First and most obviously, honey is explicitly mentioned in the Hobbit. While Beorn is shown to keep bees and use honey, it is not unreasonable to assume that honey is used by Men besides Beorn, and it is possible that both elves and hobbits may have done the same. Tom Bombadil may or may not keep bees, but he serves honeycomb to his guests, and presumably could use the honey in cooking or baking also. It is uncertain whether dwarves would have kept bees - in the case of Erebor at least, we know the dwarves imported the majority of their food rather than engage in agriculture, so it seems unlikely that they would engage in beekeeping. But honey could easily have been among their imports.

In addition to honey, there are also various trees that can be tapped for sap to make syrups, including maple and birch. Birch trees are mentioned several times in Lord of the Rings, so the birch at least is known in Middle-earth; the maple is uncertain. (Eldamo lists an Early Qenya word for maple, citing Parma Eldalamberon 16, but I am uncertain how much weight to give that.) Barley malt syrup or rice syrup, made from soaked and sprouted grain, are also possible sweeteners. Given the name of Barliman Butterbur the innkeeper, it is probably a safe guess that barley exists in Middle-earth. Another potential alternative is sweet sorghum, which can be grown in more northern climates* and used to produce a syrup similar to molasses.

While it could also be applied more widely, for the hobbits in particular, it is possible that sugar beets would be a source of sugar. The Shire is modelled on Worcestershire in England, putting it in a climate that allows for sugar beets. (Worcestershire itself is slightly outside of England’s primary sugar production areas of the East Midlands and East Anglia.) Production of beet sugar was well established in Europe by the 1850s, so if we assume that Tolkien meant the Shire to closely mirror the England of his youth, it seems reasonable for beet sugar to be present.

*Minnesota and Wisconsin are not tropical, but sweet sorghum is grown there.