I just received my copy of The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, edited by Darra Goldstein, one of the world’s best food writers. I received it, because I was one of the 265 experts who contributed to this comprehensive introduction to all things sweet. I wrote just two of the roughly 600 articles accommodated in the almost 900 pages. It was a serious challenge to condense the enormous diversity of sweet wines and sweet fortified wines to just a few pages, that explained how they are made and put them in the wider context of sweet beverages and foods, historic and contemporary. I hope very much that taking a very logical approach to this (the different wines are arranged by production method) enabled me to find a good solution for readers unfamiliar with these technicalities. Since unpacking the book I’ve been enjoying reading what my colleagues wrote about all things sweet. Although I’d already read quite widely on this subject, I’ve been learning so much it feels like I’ve just arrived in a new world of taste. That strikes me as a very positive sign, and I recommend this standard work to you if you are fascinated by sweet things, because it is so much more colorful and readable than most such tomes are. As the title say, I’m proud to be a small cog in the great machine that is Sugar and Sweets!
Here is one place that you can buy Sugar and Sweets for less than $50. It’s also available as a Kindle e-book:
