Frogleg muttered....

> On Mon, 02 Feb 2004 11:36:04 -0600, Olivers >
> wrote:
>
>>We (hosts) serve to ourselves and to guests sweetened
>>foods/sauces/condiments as part of ancient cultural memory, that we
>>were of an affluence which allowed us to purchase sweeteners (in a
>>time when sugars were vastly more expensive/harder to get than today).
>
> My theory is that calorie-dense foods (fats and sugars) were the most
> desirable when simple survival was the goal. Sharing these prizes
> would be nurturing and hospitable.
>
>>Certainly, in the US South, "sweetening" has cultural/societal
>>implications. Pooor man's cornbread remains sugarless unto this day,
>
> Don't think so. Sorghum and cane are common in old-time Southern
> cooking.

But most regionallly marketed Southern cornbread "mixes" contain no sugar
(and white meal products are popular), while the national brands are
heavily sugared (and overwhelmingly from yellow cornmeal). Cornbread
certainly continues to be a food primarily eaten in lower income
househholds (or those where family members were raised in lower income or
rural environments). As for sorghum and cane syrups, they are for putting
on cornbread, not in it...(ahhh, memories of my grandmother's favorite,
cornbread crumbled in buttermilk, with just a dash of syrup atop...)


>
>>while
>>most of the current mixes - the cornbreads of even modest affluence -
>>are so heavily sugared as to be unpalatable. "Sweet" tea, massively
>>pre- sugared, is a typical restaurant and home manifestation of
>>"moving up" among the lower and lower middle class venues in which it
>>is most often available. Unsugared hams are hard to find, and most of
>>the pink loaves currently purveyed are more sweet than they are
>>"hammy".
>
> Regional, not class, preferences.

Any Southerner worth his salt (or sugar) can predict (by "Class")just which
restaurant or household will serve sweetened tea. Move up the
income/affluence/segmented market appeal ladder and unsweetened tea doesn't
appear (in resturant or household). Of course it's regional, but heavily
defined by income and environment within the region.

> Many Southerners put sugar in a lot
> of things many Californians don't. Southern iced tea is normally very
> sweet; it's unsweetened in other regions.

Your knowledge of the US South is obviously inadequate. We could drive
down most any Southern street and pick out restaurants (or homes) where
pre-sweetened tea will be offered.

> Smithfield, VA, the center
> of much classic ham production, produces mostly salt-cured products,
> 'though 'honey-cured' items are available.

"Smithfield" these days being a brand name for a modestly priced line of
prepared pork products, the "Smithfield" brand hams in most meat counters
are as heavily dosed with water and sugar as are the Hormels, etc.. Now,
if you're talking of dry-cured Smithfield-style hams, whether from Virginia
or even Missouri, you're talking about a tiny fraction of 1% of the ham
market, barely a blip, as most folks would turn up there noses at the
traditional and historic versions of ham. Your market will have "honey
cured" or "Maple sugar smoked", etc., but almost every label will reveal a
transfusion of sugar amidst the water enema that most hams receive.

>
> The OP inquired about a "North American" fondness for sugar, which I
> think is a mistaken impression. *I* wonder about the inclusion of
> sugar in many dishes in Southern US cooking, But it's mostly, AFAIK, a
> regional preference.
>

.....and pumpkin pie, a "Yankee" dish, is not a vegetable laced with sugar
to make it more appealing/palatable? Are not dozens of Czech and German
recipes heavily sugared? British "savory" condiments, a trademark of an
otherwise bland cuisine?

As for sugar being cheap....for po'folks in the South refined sugar
remained relatively expensive until post-Depression years, while syrups,
sorghum/cane/molasses are not adaptable to many baked goods.

Just as my grandmother, a kitchen-master when it came to scratch biscuits
(or beaten, cheese, sweet potator, etc. varieties) or a dozen different
types of cornbread, hastened to the grocery to buy "store bought light
bread" when I was coming to lunch on school days, demonstrating that she,
raised an orphan on a hardscrabble West Texas ranch, had "moved up", she
saved a number of heavily sugared recipes for "company". My grandfather,
born in the Centennial Year, 1876, was even truer to his roots. He limited
his intake of "canned goods" to peaches and tomatoes, preferably from the
can with a spoon, but preferred condensed or evaporated milk in his coffee,
both habits "pure cowboy".

"Southern" is a category of cuisine which encompasses vast varieties,
separate by affluence, urban or rural (and a myriad of subregions and areas
thereof), and certainly ethnic and racial considerations. Even "sugared"
tea, a caste/class offering is far more likely to be encountered in parts
of Georgia than in Texas West of the Brazos, although here in Central
Texas, I can think of dozens of resturants with side-by-side metal tea
dispenser, one sweet, one "plain". Most of them (with only one exception
that comes to mind, a chain of delis), don't need a sign to indicate that
"sweet tea" is available. The building, the address and the vehicles in
the parking lot provide good circumstantial evidence of what lurks within.

On the otherhand, the Resort at Amelia Island, the Inn on Turtle Creek, the
Club at Augusta, Ponte Vedra, Galatoire's, Brennan's, Ruth's Chris, etc.
would make you a glass of sweet tea, but are unlikely to have it in an urn
or on the menu.

TMO