Wendy A. Woloson. Refined Tastes: Sugar, Confectionery, and Consumers in Nineteenth‐Century America

University of the Pacific Scholarly Commons College of the Pacific aF culty Articles All Faculty Scholarship Spring 1-1-2003 Wendy A. Woloson. Refined aT stes: Sugar, Confectionery, and Consumers in Nineteenth‐Century America Ken Albala University of the Pacific, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/cop-facarticles Part of the Food Security Commons, History Commons, and the Sociology Commons Recommended Citation Albala, K. (2003). Wendy A. Woloson. Refined Tastes: Sugar, Confectionery, and Consumers in Nineteenth‐Century America. Winterthur Portfolio, 38(1), 72–76. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/cop-facarticles/70 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the All Faculty Scholarship at Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in College of the Pacific aF culty Articles by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 72 Winterthur Portfolio 38:1 upon American material life, the articles pri- ture, anthropologists, and sociologists as well as marily address objects and individuals within the food historians. It also serves as a vivid account Delaware River valley. Philadelphia, New Jersey, of the emergence of consumer culture in gen- and Delaware are treated extensively. Outlying eral, focusing on the democratization of once- Quaker communities, such as those in New En- expensive sweets due to new technologies and in- gland, North Carolina, and New York state, are es- dustrial production and their shift from symbols sentially absent from the study. Similarly, the vol- of power and status to indulgent ephemera best ume focuses overwhelmingly upon the material life left to women and children. Woloson is particu- of the elite of American Quaker society. Carved larly apt at describing how candy itself was classi- Chippendale high chests, Duncan Phyfe sofas, and fied (expensive French bonbons for the elite and portraits by John Singleton Copley and Charles cheaper sweets for the common rabble) and how Willson Peale are lovely to contemplate, but their the middle and lower classes, through social emu- inclusion in these studies probably reflects the hier- lation, continually forced exclusive confectioners archies of late-twentieth-century connoisseurship to reinvent their products to maintain distinction. rather than these objects’ centrality to historical That is, the catalysts of fashion and taste in sweets constructions of American Quaker identity. were its very ubiquity and the myriad ways produc- The greatest success of Quaker Aesthetics is that ers sought to capture new markets. it demonstrates the complexity of the question The author shows that to nineteenth-century addressed. By investigating the material with Americans, the meaning of sugar not only which believers shaped their worlds, this volume changed over time but was created by a complex indicates that a monolithic American Quakerism interplay of competing voices, a phenomenon has never existed. It introduces us to varied true of all consumables, especially food. Objects Quaker identities that developed in the Delaware can mean varied things to different people, or River valley as the result of divisions in class, time, even to the same person, depending on the con- and religious orthodoxy. Instead of codifying a re- text or company. Woloson describes shrewd ad- ified American Quaker aesthetic, this book in- vertising campaigns, the opinions of nutritionists forms us of the various ways in which believers and food-purity experts, the stern warnings of ra- have negotiated the Friends’ spiritual ambiva- bid reformers, and then the ideas and aspirations lence to the physical world. Rather than furnish- of consumers themselves negotiating among ing one simple answer to the intricate and impor- these various claims. In the end, sugar and sweet- tant question of how Quaker belief has affected ness became feminized as the domestic ideal of American material culture, the authors and edi- the period increasingly cast women as pretty pos- tors clarify the questions we should ask in estab- sessions, themselves to be adorned, admired, and lishing our own conclusions. consumed as status symbols. Whether the Valen- tine’s Day gift, ice cream in an elegant pleasure William D. Moore garden or saloon, or a grandiose wedding cake, University of North Carolina at Wilmington these items were increasingly fetishized as indis- pensable conveyors of personal sentiment and af- Wendy A. Woloson. Refined Tastes: Sugar, Confec- fection, even as they were mass produced. tionery, and Consumers in Nineteenth-Century Amer- Indeed, something sinister lurks beneath all ica. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, these processes in Woloson’s account. She points 2002.xiϩ277 pp.; 36 illustrations, essay on sources, out how children were trained to be competitive index. $46.00. consumers at the candy-store window, how the food industries usurped socially meaningful tradi- Refined Tastes: Sugar, Confectionery, and Consumers tions of production for holidays and special occa- in Nineteenth-Century America is an elegantly struc- sions within the family setting, and how artisinal tured and beautifully written exploration of the confectioners were pushed out by machines changing meaning of candy, ice cream, and re- cranking out shoddy imitations. Some nostalgia lated confections in nineteenth-century America. surfaces here, although we are never really shown The book ultimately explains how sugar has today that candy was once a true manifestation of indi- gained its preeminent role in the American diet. vidual creativity connecting the craftsman or do- As a biography of comestibles and how their for- mestic producer with eager and appreciative con- tunes reflect larger changes in American society, sumers. Marx, or perhaps even William Morris, the book will appeal to historians of material cul- seems to unconsciously pervade these pages. Not This content downloaded from 138.009.041.187 on December 06, 2016 13:00:10 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). Book Reviews 73 that this thread mars the account, but it runs con- sarily intensified as sweets became increasingly sistently through the narrative, and the reader, available in ever more forms to the masses. Apart with hindsight, is often left wishing that the mor- from a few dissenters, whom Woloson cites, nine- alists’ dire exhortations had been heeded and teenth-century consumers blithely munched their that we had not unwittingly become a sugar- candies without the slightest concern, yet another addicted culture. way this story relates hauntingly to the present. Refined Tastes picks up a story where three clas- Woloson also masterfully illustrates the role of sics of food studies left off: Sidney Mintz’s Sweet- advertising in promoting the American sweet ness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, tooth, particularly the ways in which manufactur- Elizabeth David’s Harvest of the Cold Months, and ers created meaning for consumers. The success- Michael Coe and Sophie Coe’s True History of ful marketing strategy sold not just candy but a Chocolate.1 It focuses on the American side of complex message or even a lifestyle. Manufactur- the story but also carefully probes the meaning ers allowed children to mimic adult behaviors by of these sweets in a specific and shifting eco- puffing candy cigarettes or playing with miniature nomic context. The author points out correctly versions of status objects cast in sugar or tin. Ad- that America was a good century behind Eu- vertising encouraged middle-class women to as- rope in the marginalization of sweets and their in- pire socially by receiving elegant candy boxes creasing association with immature and effeminate that imitated elite confectionery. Modern conve- palates. Sugar retained its aristocratic bearing nience foods allowed housewives to impress their much longer in the United States due to its lim- guests by presenting them with fancy molded ice ited availability well into the eighteenth century. cream forms, demonstrations of the women’s lar- This fact perhaps explains the rapid and decisive gesse and dexterity as well as their leisure time de- shift in meaning that sugar experienced once it voted to such frippery while servants did the hard finally became available and affordable. Sugar work. Once again, one can not help but think sculptures remained as vestigial rudiments of me- how much our own culture is informed by the dieval “subtleties,” but sugar had also evolved into nineteenth-century processes Woloson describes. new species, such as penny candies, portable ice The author recounts many smaller and equally cream cones, and a variety of other popular con- fascinating stories as well. Each chapter presents a fections, that were better adapted to compete in smaller vignette that highlights the larger themes. the transformed marketplace. The first chapter focuses on sugar itself and its his- Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the tory up to the colonial period. In America, simply story is how Americans consistently and con- because of its scarcity, sugar remained the exclu- sciously ignored the harsh realities of sugar and sive preserve of the wealthy and was used primarily cacao production on what were at first slave plan- as a condiment, much like spices, or as medicine tations. This ignorance itself is another facet of in small amounts. Yet Woloson demonstrates

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