Listener Call

BRIAN: If you’re just joining us, this is BackStory. Today on the show, a history of sugar in America.

PETER: backstoryradio.org is where we’ve been soliciting your comments on today’s topic. And we’ve got one of those commentators on the line with us today. Brittany, where are you calling us from?

BRITTANY: I’m calling from South Dakota.

PETER: Hey, welcome. So sugar is a big issue in South Dakota?

BRITTANY: Well, I actually did my studies in Vermont, and–

PETER: Oh, so you’re a maple sugar person.

BRITTANY: Well, my research was is on a book that’s called America Eats. It was a the book that was ever published, but it was written by the Federal Writers Project.

PETER: Oh, great.

BRITTANY: And in there was a recipe for Apple Pan Dowdy, which is basically an apple pie where you crush up some crust halfway through baking it, and it kind of melts together. And it’s really good.

PETER: Wow. So you’ve made this have you?

BRITTANY: Yeah, I did. Actually, it was very delicious research. I found it really interesting because it has some sugar in the recipe. It says a scant half cup of sugar.

PETER: Yeah.

BRITTANY: But in addition to that, there was a fourth of a cup of molasses. And I had never used molasses before. And I really didn’t even know what it tasted like. And I tried it, and like I said, the recipe was amazing. It tasted different than what I was used to in apple pie.

But I just curious as to kind of the role of molasses as a sweetener because that’s kind of what it was acting like. I think more recipes use brown sugar now.

PETER: Well, sugar is part of our great big family isn’t it, Ed? You got sugar. You molasses. You got rum.

ED: Yeah. Molasses is sort of an indigenous form of sweetener that is more portable and durable then refined sugar. Molasses will keep forever. I remember in graduate school molasses was something that my wife and I ate that we brought with us from Tennessee.

And we had a new friend from Darien, Connecticut, who’d never had molasses. We had him for breakfast. You open up these biscuits and put a lot butter on them. Then pour molasses all over. It looks a lot like pouring 40 weight all over a biscuit.

And this guy was a good sport, and he eat them. And he swore that he felt like he had a bowling ball stomach in his stomach for the next three day. And I can also remember way up in the mountains of North Carolina you could make molasses from growing sugar cane along the creeks and riverbeds.

And they’d have a mule walking in a circle, tearing up the sugar cane, and boiling it down into molasses. So it’s a sort of poor person’s form of sugar. And of course, as Peter was suggesting, this molasses is really the key ingredient in rum and as part of the Triangular Trade. Isn’t that right, Peter?

PETER: Well, yeah. We’re talking about the movement of slaves from Africa to the Caribbean then sugar products moving north and these northern merchants in turn going to the coast of Africa and participating in the slave trade. It’s a way of thinking about the broad movements within the Atlantic of slaves, sugar products, and other commodities.

ED: But molasses was good because I remember sugar is really hard to transport once it’s refined. We all know what sugar does when it gets wet and so forth. So molasses was really important for a really long time.

And my sense is that it’s coming back at health food stores and all that because if you want unrefined molasses is it. And it’s easy to melt, and it’s kind of gooey, and it sticks to everything. And, god, does it make me hungry just thinking it. Have you used molasses in other baking enterprises?

BRITTANY: I haven’t. I’d be open to it. I acquired a taste for maple syrup while I was there, and I’ve used that quite a bit as a sweetener. And there were some other recipes that did include maple syrup or Apple cider as a sweetener. They do cider donuts are really common–

ED: Yeah, absolutely.

BRITTANY: –and delicious out there. This recipe came from– it says actually in the document I’m looking at it right now– from Aunt Hedey’s cookbook or from her– probably just from her head I suppose when the person interviewed her. But as this is from the 1930s, so I think what you said makes sense because being the Depression they would’ve looked for alternatives sweeteners at that time as well.

PETER: And it’s a sweetener you could make yourself. You can’t really make refined sugar yourself. But if you have just a small farm, you can make your own molasses.

ED: All you need is a mule.

PETER: I think what’s interesting is that this is a part of a recovery of a loss kind of sweetness that in the middle of the 20th century we did our best to eradicate, and sweeteners just became ubiquitous but not visible. But now you can go to chichi restaurants and oh, look, they have the unrefined brown sugar, which would have struck our ancestors as stupid. Why would you want that when you can get to sweet, white–

BRIAN: Distilled.

PETER: snowy kind of– yeah, exactly.

BRIAN: Intense.

PETER: It’s like so many other parts of our life we sort of felt like we’ve been too refine, and now ready to get crunchy.

BRIAN: Think of what happened to white bread.

ED: Yeah.

PETER: So I think you’re a part of history. You’re recovering lost traditions.

BRITTANY: Well, I did notice when I first tasted it I actually thought it was not that good. And that was the kind of the first bite, and then I tried it again, and I realized that it was actually– it was a very different–

ED: Addictive.

BRITTANY: –taste from–

PETER: That’s how people think about history, Brittany, you know?

BRITTANY: Yeah.

PETER: They recoil initially.

BRITTANY: Yeah.

PETER: But when they come back for that second bite, we’ve got them.

ED: Yeah, tastes so good.

PETER: They can get enough.

ED: All right. So we expect to call regularly now that you’ve checked in once, and you’ll be addicted to BackStory and–

BRITTANY: Oh, I’m already addicted.

ED: Oh, wonderful.

PETER: Oh, wonderful.

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BRITTANY: I listen whenever it come on the radio.

BRIAN: Thank you very much.

PETER: Thank.

BRITTANY: Bye-bye.

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PETER: We’d love to have you join us too on the line here at BackStory. Just hop on over to our website and see the topics we’re working on. For example, later this month, we’ll be taken on the history of money, currency, cash.

We’ll also be reflecting on the way that history is presented in some of this year’s Oscar nominees. We’d love to hear your thoughts, your stories, your questions.

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PETER: That’s going to do it for us today. Remember that you can also share your thoughts about any of our shows past, present, or future via Facebook and Twitter. @backstroked is our handle. Don’t be a stranger.

BRIAN: BackStory is produced by Tony Field, Jess Engebretson, Nina Earnest, Andrew Parson, and Jesse Dukes. Emily Charnock is our research and web coordinator, and Jamal Millner is our engineer. Our intern is Eb Shank.

BackStory’s executive producer is Andrew Wyndham.

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PETER: Major support for BackStory is provided by an anonymous donor, by the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, the University of Virginia, Weinstein Properties, and History Channel, “History made every day.”

FEMALE SPEAKER: Brian Balogh is Professor of History at the University of Virginia. Peter Onuf is Professor of History Emeritus at UVA and Senior Research Fellow at Monticello. Ed Ayers is President and Professor of History at the University of Richmond. BackStory was created by Andrew Wyndham for the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.

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