fed the exiled Israelites with manna, which
is described as “like coriander seed, white;
and the taste of it was like wafers made
with honey.” Today this term is used for
the sugar-rich secretion of certain trees and
also certain insects. In the Middle East, the
tamarisk tree produces enough manna that
Bedouin nomads can collect several
pounds in a morning, and go on to make
halvah with it. The sugar alcohol mannitol
(p. 662) owes its name to the fact that it
was first found in and extracted from
manna.Sugar: Beginnings in Asia
Europe barely knew what we now consider
ordinary table sugar until around 1100, and it
was a luxury until 1700. Our first major
source of sucrose was the sugar cane,
Saccharum officinarum, a 20-foot-tall
member of the grass family with an unusually