On Food and Cooking

After mother’s milk, the first significant
source of sweetness in human experience
must have been fruits. Some warm-climate
fruits like the date can approach a sugar
content of 60%, and even temperate fruits
become very sweet when they dry out. But the
most concentrated natural source of sweetness
is honey, the stored food of certain species of
bees, which reaches 80% sugars. It’s clear
from a remarkable painting in the Spider Cave
of Valencia that humans have gone out of
their way to collect honey for at least 10,000
years. The “domestication” of bees probably
goes back 4,000 years, judging by Egyptian
hieroglyphs that show clay hives.
However our ancestors obtained it, honey
came to represent pleasure and fulfillment to
them, and is a prominent metaphor in some of
the earliest literature we know. A love poem
inscribed 4,000 years ago on a Sumerian clay
tablet describes a bridegroom as
“honeysweet,” the bride’s caress as “more