The original hardback gained universal praise; 'A fascinating account'
said the TLS; echoed by national and local press; 'A fascinating book
full of off-beat information', wrote Derek Cooper. This book looks
beyond the brilliant colours of the sweet-shop shelf and consider the
ingenuity of sugar boiling and the manufacture of those intriguing
avatars of childhood happiness: the humbug, the gobstopper, the peardrop
and the stick of rock. As well as a history, it is also a recipe book,
with twenty tried and tested methods for sweets ancient and modern. Who
has not wondered how they got the marbling into humbugs and the
fantastic patterns into Just William's gobstoppers? The byways of
knowledge that are illuminated make this so rewarding. Did you know how
they got the letters into rock? How they twisted barley sugar? The
difference between fudge and tablet? The connection between humbugs and
an Arab sweet from 13th-century Spain (where it was borrowed it from the
Persians)?