Sweetness at a very steep price (IMO)
Sugar nippers. What's that, you say? Why, just a basic household tool... if you were a 19th century housekeeper.
Until the late 19th/early 20th century, sugar was sold in cone shaped loaves. And every time you wanted to use some sugar - you had to literally pound it to pieces and then grind it.
Read this excerpt from the Family Magazine or Monthly Abstract of General Knowledge, 1837, USA:
It is always a bad plan to buy sugar by the pound, for the paper is weighed in with every pound. To break loaf sugar into small pieces ready for the nippers, use an iron hammer and cleaver; a wooden mallet chips, and the particles of wood become so incorporated with the sugar-dust, that it is difficult to separate it.
So here's how the sugar process worked:
1) Go to the market and buy a cone-shaped sugar loaf
2) Hack it into smaller chunks using a hammer and chisel, or, if you had one, with a sugar cutting box
3) Cut it into even smaller pieces using a sugar nipper. If you were lucky (aka had more money), your nippers were mounted onto a piece of wood. Otherwise, you had to steady the sugar nipper against the edge of the table while you squeezed with all your might.
4) If you were the mistress of a well-to-do-household, the final step of creating neat lumps for the dining room and tea table would be your job. The crude sugar lumps would be kept in a large box to which only you had the key (sugar was a precious luxury product back then). And you'd have a more elegant pair of scissor like sugar nippers to create pretty looking lumps/cubes for the table.
A pair of sugar-nippers are indispensable, for breaking small the loaf-sugar, after it has been cracked with a stout knife and a mallet or hammer. It should then be kept in a closely covered tin or wooden box, There should be a box also for brown sugar. Miss Leslie's Lady's House-Book, 1850, Philadelphia
5) If you needed granulated sugar for baking - there was yet ANOTHER step - grinding the lumps with a mortar and pestle, or spice-mill.
Loaf Sugar should be well pounded, and then sifted through a fine sieve. Isabella Beeton, Book of Household Management, 1861
Tough work, eh? I'm glad those days are over. On the other hand, with the obesity and diabetes crisis, maybe we should go back to this old way? Hmmmmm.....
