Sanskrit sharkara, meaning gravel or small
chunks of material; candy from the Arabic
version of the Sanskrit for sugar itself,
khandakah.
Advances in Confectionery In the 15th and
16th centuries, confectionery became more of
an art, done with greater sophistication and
intended more and more to delight the eye.
Molten sugar was now spun into delicate
threads and pulled to develop a satiny sheen,
and confectioners began to develop ways of
determining the different states of a sugar
syrup and their appropriateness to different
preparations. By the 17th century, court
confectioners were making whole table
settings and massive decorations out of sugar,
hard sugar candies had become common, and
cooks had developed systems for marking the
syrup concentrations suitable for different
confections — ancestors of today’s thread-
ball-crack scale (see box, p. 651).
A Pleasure for All