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SWEET DEBATES IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY BARCELONA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 August 2020

MARTA MANZANARES MILEO Open the ORCID record for MARTA MANZANARES MILEO [Opens in a new window]
MARTA MANZANARES MILEO*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
*
Faculty of History, University of Cambridge, West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9EF, UKmm2298@cam.ac.uk
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Abstract

Scholarly interest in early modern sweets has focused on the central role of these food products as markers of social distinction and conspicuous consumption in elite contexts, mainly centred on northern Europe and Italy. Less fully understood are the ways in which the increasing demand for sugar and sweets informed their production and marketing at local levels, in particular in non-courtly urban areas. This article examines the legal case against the baker Josep Cortés, accused of making and selling sponge biscuits in violation of the privilege of confectioners in late seventeenth-century Barcelona. It addresses how confectioners and bakers materially and discursively defined their products based on the use of certain ingredients, utensils, and skill. This article also illustrates a shift from a generic idea of sweetness to one which was explicitly linked to sugar in the period when sugar was becoming a semi-affordable commodity in Europe. By addressing diverse source materials including court records, printed cookbooks, handwritten recipes, and inventories, this case study exemplifies the significant material and cultural dimensions that sugar adopted during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Type
Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 64 , Issue 3 , June 2021 , pp. 515 - 532
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Dr Melissa Calaresu and Professor Elizabeth S. Cohen for their helpful comments. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers at the Historical Journal for their valuable feedback. My thanks to the audiences of the Cultural History Workshop in Cambridge, the Northrop Frye Centre in Toronto, and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, to which earlier versions of this article were presented. The research for this article was conducted as part of my doctoral research at the University of Barcelona.

References

1 The terms melindros and bescuit d'ous (egg biscuits) are used indiscriminately in early modern Catalan documents. All translations from Catalan and Spanish are my own.

2 Archivo de la Corona de Aragón (ACA), Diversos, Colegio de drogueros y confiteros de Barcelona, num. 7, fos. 135v–136r.

3 The civil court of the Real Audiencia usually acted as an appellate court in the second instance in legal cases between guilds. For a detailed account of the judicial system in early modern Catalonia, see Pomà, Víctor Ferro, El dret públic català. Les institucions a Catalunya fins al Decret de Nova Planta (Catalan public law: institutions in Catalonia until the Decree of Nova Planta) (Vic, 1987)Google Scholar.

4 Among others, see Farr, James R., ‘On the shop floor: guilds, artisans and the European market economy, 1350–1750’, Journal of Early Modern History, 1 (1997), pp. 24–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Epstein, Stephan R. and Prak, Marteen, eds., Guilds, innovation and the European economy, 1400–1800 (Cambridge, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Davis, Jennifer J., Defining culinary authority: the transformation of cooking in France, 1650–1830 (Baton Rouge, LA, 2013), esp. ch. 4Google Scholar.

6 Spary, Emma C., Eating the Enlightenment: food and the sciences in Paris (Chicago, IL, 2012), chs. 2 and 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 For this approach, see, for example, Mintz, Sidney W., Sweetness and power: the place of sugar in modern history (New York, 1985)Google Scholar; Galloway, J. H., The sugar cane industry (Cambridge, 1989)Google Scholar; Abbot, Elizabeth, Sugar: a bittersweet history (Toronto, 2008)Google Scholar. For a recent revision of the Atlantic sugar economies, see Schwartz, Stuart B., ed., Tropical Babylons: sugar and the making of the Atlantic world, 1450–1680 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 From a vast literature, see, in particular, Mintz, Sweetness and power, esp. ch. 3; de Lemps, Alain Huetz, ‘Colonial beverages and the consumption of sugar’, in Flandrin, Jean-Louis and Montanari, Massimo, eds., Food: a culinary history from antiquity to the present (New York, NY, 1999), pp. 383–93Google Scholar; Smith, Woodruff D., ‘From coffeehouse to parlour: the consumption of coffee, tea and sugar in north-western Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, in Goodman, J., Lovejoy, P. E., and Sherratt, A., eds., Consuming habits: drugs in history and anthropology (London, 1995), pp. 149–64Google Scholar.

9 For further explanation of the sweet courses in early modern Europe, see Wheaton, Barbara Ketcham, Savouring the past: the French kitchen and table from 1300 to 1789 (London, 1983)Google Scholar; Strong, Roy, Feast: a history of grand eating (London, 2002)Google Scholar. For sugar banquets in early modern Britain, see Wilson, C. Anne, ed., Banquetting stuffe: the fare and social background of the Tudor and Stuart banquet (Edinburgh, 1991)Google Scholar; and, more recently, Stewart, Louise, ‘Social status and classicism in the visual and material culture of the sweet banquet in early modern England’, Historical Journal, 61 (2018), pp. 913–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Avery, Victoria and Calaresu, Melissa, eds., Feast and fast: the art of food in Europe, 1500–1800 (London, 2019)Google Scholar.

10 One exception is Isabel Mendes Drumond Braga, who has studied the guild of confectioners using Inquisition records from Lisbon and Evora: see Isabel Mendes Drumond Braga, ‘Confeiteiros na época moderna: cultura material, produção e conflituosidade’ (‘The confectioners in the modern era: material culture, production and bickering’), in Carmen Soares and Irene Coutinho, eds., Ensaios sobre património alimentar luso-brasileiro (Essays on Portuguese-Brazilian food heritage) (Coimbra, 2014), pp. 165–92.

11 For a recent case study in early modern Madrid, see Sánchez, José A. Nieto and Zofío, Juan Carlos, ‘The return of the guilds: a view from early modern Madrid’, Journal of Social History, 50 (2016), pp. 247–72Google Scholar.

12 The methodological challenges of historical research on food and eating practices in the early modern period have been recently emphasized in Calaresu, Melissa, ‘Introduction: the material worlds of food in early modern Europe’, Journal of Early Modern History, 24 (2020), pp. 1–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Regarding the necessity of looking at the role of food production beyond domestic kitchens, see Pennell, Sara, ‘Getting down from the table’, in Richardson, Catherine, Hamling, Tara, and Gaimster, David, eds., The Routledge handbook of material culture in early modern Europe (London, 2017), pp. 186–95Google Scholar.

13 See Corteguera, Luis R., ‘The painter who lost his hat: artisans and justice in early modern Barcelona’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 29 (1998), pp. 1023–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On artisans and legal conflicts in a broader European context, see Poni, Carlo, ‘Norms and disputes: the Shoemakers’ Guild in eighteenth-century Bologna’, Past & Present, 123 (1989), pp. 80–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sonenscher, Michael, Work and wages: natural law, politics, and the eighteenth-century French trades (Cambridge, 1989)Google Scholar.

14 Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat de Barcelona (Historical Archive of the City of Barcelona) (AHCB), Registre d'ordinacions (Register of ordinances), 1B.IV–18, fo. 136r. In this article, the Catalan name adroguer has been translated as ‘grocer’, a vendor of medical and non-medical simples, herbs, spices, and other exotic goods, but distinct from the apothecaries whose job was to prepare and sell compound medicines. Conversely, these trades overlapped in many European cities or were exercised by different professionals established in the same guild.

15 In 1445, King Alfons V of Aragon ordered a municipal reform in Barcelona establishing a distinction between oficis and col⋅legis. The name col⋅legi exclusively applied to apothecaries, surgeons, linen drapers, grocer-confectioners, and wax candlemakers. See Montpalau, Antoni de Capmany y, Memorias históricas sobre la marina, comercio y artes de la antigua ciudad de Barcelona (Barcelona, 2001; orig. edn 1779), ii, p. 120Google Scholar. Apothecaries guilds, who sold simples, sweets, and compound medicines, held a privileged position in many European cities and received the name of Corps in Paris, Arte maggiore in Florence, and Collegio in Rome. For Paris, see Lespinasse, René de, Les métiers et corporations de la ville de Paris. XIVe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1886), iGoogle Scholar. For the Italian cities, see Guenzi, Alberto, Massa, Paola, and Moioli, Angelo, Corporazioni e gruppi professionali nell'Italia moderna (Milan, 1999)Google Scholar.

16 The grocer-confectioners of Barcelona have only been studied before in relation to their trade activities. See Espuche, Albert Garcia, ‘Una ciutat d'adroguers’ (‘A city of grocers’), in Espuche, Albert Garcia et al. , eds., Drogues, dolços i tabac. Barcelona 1700 (Drugs, sweets and tobacco. Barcelona 1700) (Barcelona, 2010), pp. 18–108Google Scholar. For an account of partnerships between members of the college and traders and their upward mobility, see Molas, Pere, Comerç i estructura social a Catalunya i València als segles XVII i XVIII (Trade and social structure in Catalonia and Valencia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) (Barcelona, 1977)Google Scholar.

17 Note that the term confitura has a more restricted use today, describing only a sort of fruit paste or preserve.

18 Mintz, Sweetness and power, p. 44.

19 Covarrubias, Sebastián de, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española (Madrid, 1611), fo. 223vGoogle Scholar.

20 ‘Qualquier género de cosa confitada en seco’ (Diccionario de autoridades, iii (1732), s.v. dulce).

21 Ibid., ii (1729), s.v. confitura.

22 Ibid., i (1726), s.v. azúcar.

23 de Baeza, Miguel, Los quatro libros del arte de la confitería (Alcalá de Henares, 1592), fo. 1rGoogle Scholar. Little is known about this book, as only two original copies have been located: in the library of the Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial (Madrid) and in the Bibliothèque nationale de Paris.

24 Ibid., fos. 81–3.

25 For a detailed discussion of confectioners’ books in early modern Catalonia, see Mileo, Marta Manzanares and Samper, Maria Àngeles Pérez, ‘La confitura a la Catalunya moderna’ (‘Confectionery in early modern Catalonia’), in Sabaté, Flocel, ed., Sucre i societat (Sugar and society) (Lleida, 2017), pp. 137–57Google Scholar. Later examples of early confectioners’ books from the late eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century have been located in Navarre and Aragon. See Larráyoz, Fernando Serrano, ‘Confitería y cocina conventual navarra en el siglo XVIII: notas y precisiones sobre el “Recetario de Marcilla” y “el cocinero religioso” de Antonio Salsete’, Príncipe de Viana, 243 (2008), pp. 141–86Google Scholar; Joaquín Gacén, Memoria para los confiteros y medios para confitar y saber hacer pastelillos y turrones de toda clase (1804).

26 In particular, preserves of citrons, quinces, walnuts, pears, aubergines, peaches, carrots, plums, almonds, oranges, and lemons. See ‘Es de difarents gèneros de confitures tant de mel com de sucre’, Biblioteca de Catalunya (BC), MS 2810, ch. 113–26. The same honey-based recipes appeared in a 1668 collection produced by the young confectioner Rafel Coromines, Arxiu i Biblioteca Episcopal de Vic (Episcopal Archive and Library of Vic) (ABEV), MS 243, fos. 50v–51v.

27 For a recent and informative study of the introduction of sugar in early modern Europe, see Eddy Stols, ‘The expansion of the sugar market in western Europe’, in Schwartz, ed., Tropical Babylons, pp. 258–75.

28 Feliu, Gaspar, Precios y salarios en la Cataluña moderna (Madrid, 1991), i, p. 123Google Scholar.

29 For a detailed account of the early modern sugar industry in Andalucía, see Salcedo, Margarita M. Birriel, ‘La producción azucarera de la Andalucía Mediterránea, 1500–1750’, in Producción y comercio del azúcar de caña en época preindustrial. Actas del tercer seminario international, Motril, 23–27 Septiembre 1991 (Granada, 1993), pp. 101–38Google Scholar.

30 A 1655 price list from Barcelona indicates that a pound of refined sugarloaves from Amsterdam cost 10 sous, and those from Motril, 8 sous. These high prices significantly differed from the lower qualities of sugar such as muscovado and sugarcane molasses from Motril and the Levant, which cost from 2 to 4 sous. The Barcelona sou was the Catalan currency, and 20 sous were valued at 1 lliura (pound). See ‘Tarifa, y postura de preus de les coses infraescrites, Adroguers [1655]’ (‘Prices of things written below. Grocers’), in Alberch, Ramon, Gremis i oficis a Girona. Treball i societat a l’època pre-industrial (Guilds and trades in Girona: labour and society in the pre-industrial era) (Girona, 1984), pp. 217–19Google Scholar.

31 Shaw, Carlos Martínez, Cataluña en la carrera de Indias (Barcelona, 1981), p. 77Google Scholar.

32 The name confits comuns referred to almond comfits coated with non-refined sugar, and served to distinguish them from the more expensive confits fins made of refined white sugar. These prices can be found in ‘Tarifa, y postura de preus’, pp. 217–19.

33 For instance, a pound of honey marmalade cost 4 sous while the same preserve sweetened with sugar cost 10 sous. See ibid.

34 Mason, Laura, ‘Biscuit’, in Davidson, Alan, ed., The Oxford companion to food (New York, NY, 2014)Google Scholar; Day, Ivan, ‘The art of confectionery’, reprinted in Brown, Peter B. and Day, Ivan, Pleasures of the table: ritual and display in the European dining room, 1600–1900 (York, 1997)Google Scholar.

35 ‘Ay otros vizcochos regalados que hazen del polvo de la garina, azúcar, y de huevos’ (Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua castellana, fo. 212r).

36 Baeza, Arte de la confitería, fos. 76v–77r.

37 Montiño, Francisco Martínez, Arte de cocina, pastelería, vizcochería y conservería (Madrid, 1611)Google Scholar.

38 For a case study of the diverse economic activities of bakers in broader contexts, see Middleton, Simon, ‘“How it came that the bakers bake no bread”: a struggle for trade privileges in seventeenth-century New Amsterdam’, William and Mary Quarterly, 58 (2001), pp. 347–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Farr, James R., Hands of honor: artisans and their world in Dijon, 1550–1650 (London, 1988), p. 59Google Scholar.

40 Kaplan, Steven L., The bakers of Paris and the bread question, 1700–1775 (Durham, NC, 1996), p. 41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Espuche, ‘Una ciutat d'adroguers’, p. 90.

42 The resulting bread was also distinguished in early modern sources between bread sold by bakers (pa de fleca) and those loaves made in private households and cooked in the bakers’ ovens (pa casolà). For a compelling history of bread and grain supplies in early modern Spain, see de Castro, Concepción, El pan de Madrid. El abasto de las ciudades españolas del antiguo régimen (Madrid, 1987)Google Scholar. On Barcelona, see Samper, María Ángeles Pérez, ‘El pan nuestro de cada día en la Barcelona moderna’, Pedralbes: Revista d'història moderna, 22 (2002), pp. 29–71Google Scholar.

43 The bakers’ guild was founded in 1448 and their first statutes date from 1453. A copy of the bakers’ ordinances can be found in ‘Ordinacions del nou redrés de la ciutat de Barcelona per la administració de la fleca i forments feta al 29 de juliol 1533’ (‘New ordinances of the city of Barcelona for the administration of the bakery and wheat made on 29 July 1533’), BC, MS 9316.

44 In Catalonia, a tortell is a kind of ring-shaped pastry often made for holidays such as Epiphany, a coca is a sort of flat oval-shaped pastry prepared in sweet and savoury varieties, and pa beneït (holy bread) is a local variety of coca with sugar dust on top. See AHCB, Gremi General, caixa 5-F, doc. 15, fo. 2r.

45 ‘Tractat de diferents confitures y drogues que han de tenir per ser bonas’, BC, MS 875.

46 All these recipes can be found in ‘Es de difarents gèneros de confitures’, BC, MS 2810, fos. 8r, 27v.

47 ACA, Real Audiencia, Pleitos civiles, 922, fo. 152.

48 In support of their petition, the bakers presented a copy of their regulations dated 1499 and 1533. See ibid.

49 ACA, Real Audiencia, Pleitos civiles, 922.

50 Ibid.

51 Ibid.: ‘la penyora produirà altercats i allargar el plet contra els forners’.

52 The sentence pronounced by Francisco de Ribera reads: ‘seu Biscoctorum ovorum, vulgo Melindros, Marsapans, Bocadillos, et quarumcumque pastarum pertinere ad dictos Aromatharios tanquam propiam’. A copy of this royal sentence can be found in ACA, Diversos, Colegio de drogueros y confiteros de Barcelona, num. 70, fo. 53r.

53 Prima, Carles, Manifiesto de la verdad que en vozes esparcidas agenas della, afectó enturbiar el Colegio de los Adrogueros de la ciudad de Barcelona y con ellas obscurecer la ley común, y embaraçar la real merced (Barcelona, 1681)Google Scholar.

54 ‘Porque la voz dulces o confitura, solo abraça … dos géneros de frutas, unas de corteza dura, como almendras, avellanas, nuezes de pino y nogal etc., otras de corteza blanda, como cerezas, albercoques, durasnos, ciruelas, mançanas, peras, membrillo, melón, calabaza, lechuga, etc. y todas ellas con gueso, grano o semilla’ (ibid., p. 27).

55 ACA, Real Audiencia, Pleitos civiles, 922.

56 BC, F.BON 10.007 [Barcelona, 1679], fo. 3r.

57 Ibid.

58 ‘Es de difarents gèneros de confitures’, BC, MS 2810, fo. 10r. See also ABEV, MS 243, fos. 40v–41r.

59 For prices of Cortés's melindros, see ACA, Real Audiencia, Pleitos civiles, 922. For prices of confectioners’ products, see ‘Tarifa, y postura de preus’, pp. 217–19.

60 ‘Són de diferent qualitat, espècie, modo y gust’ (ACA, Real Audiencia, Pleitos civiles, 922).

61 A tortada is a kind of cake made of flour, almonds, sugar, eggs, and other ingredients; an encasada was a sort of pastry made of flour, butter or milk, and oil. See ACA, Real Audiencia, Pleitos civiles, 922, fos. 225v–226r.

62 Ibid, fo. 237r.

63 Ibid, fo. 236v.

64 ‘Acuérdate confitero, que eres polvo y no pasta’ (Prima, Manifiesto de la verdad, p. 27).

65 Detailed descriptions of sugar boiling and candying procedures can be found in the 1663 manuscript book by the confectioner Francesc Coromines, Arxiu General de la Diputació de Girona (General Archive of the Girona Provincial Council), MS IV.12, published as Vila, Pep, Prat, Enric, Plana, Joan, and Boadas, Joan, eds., Un receptari gironí d'adrogueria i confiteria del segle XVII de Francesc Corominas (An eighteenth-century treatise on drugs and confectionery by Francesc Corominas from Girona) (Girona, 1994)Google Scholar.

66 ‘Esbromadora per clarificar sucre, parols petits per coure sucre, una caldera per fer confitura d'aram, caldera de fer confits, una caldera d'aram gran per emparlar confitura, tres “cossis” grans per englotir, una casseta per emperlar.’ Cited in Espuche, ‘Una ciutat d'adroguers’, pp. 88–89, nn. 45, 46, 49, and 50; Lencina, Xavier, ‘Els adroguers barcelonins al segle XVII: aspectes productius i comercials’ (‘The grocers in seventeenth-century Barcelona: aspects of production and trade’), in Pujolà, Lluís Virós i, ed., Organització del treball preindustrial. Confraries i oficis (Organization of pre-industrial labour: craft confraternities and trades) (Barcelona, 2000), pp. 157–71Google Scholar.

67 ‘Batedors, perols per fer melindros, un remenador de fer melindros de fusta and una pala de ferro per desenfurnar melindros, paper per fer melindros, lo banch de fer melindros.’ Cited in Espuche, ‘Una ciutat d'adroguers’, p. 36.

68 Ibid.

69 See, for example, Baeza, Arte de confitería, fos. 76v–77r.

70 Vila et al., eds., Un receptari gironí d'adrogueria i confiteria, pp. 126–7.

71 AHCB, Arxiu Notarial, I.65.

72 ‘Pasteras de diferents mides, una pala de ferro per fer bescuyt, una estora per fer bescuyt, un morter de pedra per moldre sucre tot usat, dos palas de enfornar pa beneyt, tres palas d'enfornar pa xich.’ In Arxiu Històric de Protocols de Barcelona (Historical Archive of the Notarial Protocols of Barcelona), Antoni Duran i Quatrecases 1728–70, 976/26, 1738.

73 ACA, Diversos, Colegio de drogueros y confiteros de Barcelona, num. 7, fo. 268.

74 Prima, Manifiesto de la verdad, p. 29.

75 AHCB, Arxiu Notarial, I.65.

76 ACA, Diversos, Colegio de drogueros y confiteros de Barcelona, num.7, fo. 511v.

77 ACA, Diversos, Colegio de drogueros y confiteros de Barcelona, num. 9, fo. 332.

78 ACA, Diversos, Colegio de drogueros y confiteros de Barcelona, num. 10, fos. 199r–200r.

79 ‘Perquè no pugan los forners broquelar-se ni allegar que ells los fan y venen millor’ (ACA, Diversos, Colegio de drogueros y confiteros de Barcelona, num. 12, fo. 119v). All guild confectioners had to stick to the following recipe: four pounds of sugar, three dozen eggs, three pounds of fine flour, and one pound of fine starch.