Confectionery

Confectionery, also known as pastry or baking, is the art of making and decorating cakes, pastries, cookies, puddings and other sweet desserts. Its story is tied to honey, sugar, and the flour and fat doughs that we now consider classic.

History

In antiquity, sweetness came mostly from honey, which was used to coat and preserve fruit. Greeks and Romans knew doughs made from flour, oil and water, but these were not meant to be eaten: they wrapped meats and birds during cooking. Oil also kept the dough from setting firm, so true pastry-making developed slowly. For centuries it was closely linked to the apothecary, and medieval antidotaries list fruit jellies and nougat alongside remedies.

According to surviving texts, the Arabs were the first to make sweets for pleasure alone, using only sugar. A Baghdad cookbook dated 1226 already records a considerable number of recipes. Sugar, however, remained a luxury, and it did not fully replace honey until the Renaissance. In northern Europe, lard and butter allowed firm, decorated doughs, and over time more complete recipes took shape and were adapted across many European countries.

Chocolate entered Western baking only after Spanish and Portuguese traders brought it from the New World. Many food historians regard the Frenchman Marie-Antoine Carême (1784-1833) as the first great master of modern pastry.

Culture

Confectionery has produced very diverse traditions. Portugal is known for its pastéis de nata, and Russia for its pirozhki. In Asia, Chinese pastries are made with rice or flour and filled with fruit, sweet bean paste or sesame, and mooncakes are part of the Mid-Autumn Festival. Korea keeps the ttok, hangwa and yaksik, while Japan is known for mochi and manjū. In Hong Kong, French influence through the restaurant chain Maxim's in the 1950s helped make Western pastry popular.

In Europe, many sweets belong to a single region, such as the kouign-amann or the canelé, while others are tied to particular times of year: the Roscón de Reyes, the Mona de Pascua, the galette des rois or the Christmas log. In Spain, the municipal judge and pastry maker Carlos Payán Romero (Camas, 1845-1931) left nineteenth-century recipes that are valued today as historical sources, such as the one for tocino del cielo, which bears little resemblance to the modern version.

Pastry differs from bread in that it aims to keep kneading to a minimum once the flour is added, and it uses yeast or baking soda to produce light, airy sponges rather than gummy ones. Common ingredients include sugar, eggs, flour, butter, vanilla, chocolate, cream, yeast and milk, and proportions matter greatly. Each year, the Coupe du monde de la patisserie names the world's best pastry chef.

Trivia