Sugar

The importance of this ingredient in the colonization and development of Brazil was such that the sociologist Gilberto Freyre devoted an entire book to it: Açúcar (Sugar), first published in 1939. In the third edition, from 1986, hee writes that the product “sweetened so many aspects of Brazilian life that one cannot separate it from national civilization”. The manufacture of sugar stared with the introduction of sugar mills in the captaincies of São Vicente and Pernambuco, back in the sixteenth century, and has favored the flourishing of an elaborate confectionery, dessert and pastry tradition, capable of taking advantage of the immense variety of fruits available to produce an endless series of recipes for jams, preserves, confections, puddings, and cakes, among many other alchemies. Point out the most representative Brazilian sweets is an impossible task. Coconut blancmange? Guava paste? Green fig compote? Bolo de fubá (corn meal cake)? There are as many classic delicacies as there are recipe notebooks stored in every home in the country. As Câmara Cascudo writes in his História da alimentação no Brasil (History of Food in Brazil), “Brazilians have never given up sweetening the mouth after salting the stomach”. In the North region, especially in Acre, a variety of brown sugar called gramixó is produced from boiled sugar cane juice.