Starting in the 1600s, loaded ships returned from plantations in the West Indies, windind their way down the Clyde, and flooding Scotland with inordinate amounts of sugar. Scotland has an uneasy relationship with these historical cargoes, filled with not only with sugar, but also tobacco and cotton from plantations often run by Scottish owners. As one of the main European ports for the last leg of the slavery triangle, it saw only the cheap and plentiful goods and ample wealth that the ships brought in, none of the horrific human sacrifices that underpinned these vessels. And while English cities have increasingly made an effort to acknowledge these difficult histories, in Scotland there has been an unwillingness to see the history of slavery as something that stained north of the border as well. Perhaps it is difficult for a place that so often remembers itself as victim to acknowledge its role as perpetrator; it makes it more complex. The legacy of the Atlantic slave trade in Glasgow has been a crop of beautiful buildings, a voracious sweet tooth and a continuing silence.
While all of this sugar had been making its way into baked goods and some candies for a couple of hundred years, there was an explosion of boiled sweets made around Glasgow during the Victorian era. At that time the sugar was no longer produced by slavery which had been abolished by 1830s (although I would be willing to bet that harvesting that crop isn't a job I would have wanted), but there was still a huge glut of cheap sugar coming into a very enthusiastic market. I know this because many of these old sweets are described beautifully in the book From Petticoat Tails to Arbroath Smokies: Traditional Foods of Scotland, by Laura Mason and Catherine Brown (Harper Press, 2007). This lovely volume is part of a wider study undertaken by the authors at the behest of the EU to detail the regional foods of European countries. In the end they found 400 food items from all over the British Isles. This report was never released by the UK government, but was eventually published in its entirety (most recently by Harper Press), and then subsequently into separate regional volumes. To make it into this collection, the foods must have been produced in that location for at least 75 years, and they must still be made to this day, even if in tiny quantities by only one or two producers. I find this exciting because I am a dork, but also because it provides me with a new map of Scotland, a guide to small local specialties to be sought out and tasted while one is traveling about. Boiled sweets, so called because the sugar is simply boiled to a high temperature before being mixed with flavourings and colourings and then shaped, are some of the delicacies most local to me.
As I mentioned in the post below, gummy candies have been my one true friend and solace over the past week. J is a willing accomplice in the demolition of these bags, but with every bite he would complain that they weren't the sweets of his youth. Any Midget Gem (they're like diminutive wine gums) I bought was just too soft and the black ones were flavoured with blackcurrant and not licorice. They weren't the Lion Brand Midget Gems he remembered. But despite looking around every shop I visited, I couldn't find them. This was now a bit of a mission; I was curious to try these gems, and also track down some of the old and traditional boiled sweets of central Scotland, so I made my way to Glickman's in the east end of Glasgow.
This shop first opened in 1903 and is still operated by the same family, four generations later. The facade is exactly what you want in a candy store. Old signs and elaborate displays of sweets who were invented long before your parents. But although it looks expansive from outside, inside it's really just a tiny little counter paved with countless cellophane bags of goodies and high walls completely full of shelves completely full of jars of sweets. The rest of the space is taken up by the work area where they make a number of the treats for sale. In the middle of all of this sits the exceedingly pleasant owner, Irene Birkett, who runs the shop with her daughter.
I waited in line behind two older ladies who each ordered approximately eight different kinds of sweeties. I like to think that these were routine purchases of old favourites to dole out to grandkids and to slowly suck for a bit of brightness in quiet moments. There is something so dear about a pack of glittering boiled sweets, distributed now and then like small jewels. While there is no doubt that excessive sugar consumption plays a major role in many of the health issues plaguing Scotland (a particularly damning article here), I think shops like Glickman's should be a safe-haven for sweeties. Sure you can get rid of the sugar in your yogurt or coffee or cereal, you can stop eating industrial candy from regular shops, but saving a little space for a carefully crafted sweet is ensuring a bit of profound joy and not very much harm. These are not the dangerous culprits of the modern diet.
I was glad that these ladies took their time because the towering rows of jars presented an overwhelming choice for a girl raised on the plastic candy bounty of Seven Eleven. I spied my number one target first: Lion Brand Midget Gems. In fact I had seen the boxes in the window, but I was still nervous that they were a relic and not an auspicious sign for goodies inside. I decided next on some acid green orbs called Soor Plooms (if you had a Scottish accent, this would roughly rhyme with Sewer Blooms), or sour plums. There were a couple of elements that made this sweet the one for me. First of all, I love most things flavoured with plum. But I also wanted to try them because I had a sneaking suspicion their name was taken from the motto of Galashiels, a small town in the Borders where my grandmother was born. Once the ladies had left, I chatted with the lovely owner who sympathized with my troubles finding the original Midget Gems and assured me that they almost always had them in stock. I asked her about the provenance of Soor Plooms, and although she wasn't sure of the Borders connection, she did tell me that they got them from a company in nearby Greenock (once called Sugaropolis for the large numbers of refineries there) that had been making them forever. I picked up a bag of brown sweets, perfunctorily called Candy Balls, because they were a specialty of the shop, made on site. And then, with my jaunty paper bag, I left to rot my teeth.
The Candy Balls were very nice. The amber colour must be evidence of a caramelization of the sugar, and indeed that's all they really taste like. They're just sweet. But they have a silky and smooth texture that I think must come from the addition of cream of tartar (it prevents sugar crystals from forming). The Candy Balls, not actually balls, but snipped bits of a long candy strand, just slip across your tongue without the painful mouth cutting of many of their boiled sweets counterparts. This is as sensual and pure as a hard candy gets.
And J was pleased with his Midget Gems, too. They were hard and unyielding and the black ones were a shocking licorice. He likes the contrast they provide when eaten with the other fruity flavours. Apparently the company has been bought by Maynards, the brand most pervasive and whose wine gums are just too soft and taste too much of icing sugar for my liking. They are supposedly changing the black ones to the now ubiquitous blackcurrant flavour. I think that some sort of legislation should be brought in to prevent companies messing with candy recipes. There is no surer way to depress someone than to wreck one of their childhood joys. I hope this untainted stock lasts a while.
A little dip back into the book confirmed that Soor Plooms were indeed invented in Galashiels. They were first made to celebrate an event back in 1337 when a small group of English marauders/soldiers (depending on which side of the border you fall) stopped in the valley to feast on some unripe plums taken from a nearby tree. This resting band were quickly captured and killed by the Scots and this, um, victory has been commemorated locally ever since. On plaques and carvings all over the the town the English are represented by a fox greedily reaching at fruit laden branches above. I remember being surprised by the long memory of the town when I went to visit, this dominating mythology based around a small event so, so long ago. I could only laugh as I tried the sweets, sour and green and delicious.
These are some candies with history! Of course, the sugar used in these sweets might have quite a different background now; it could just as easily been from beets. But that's a sugar with a tale as well. The French developed the technology for extracting it from that vegetable during the Napoleonic Wars because of blockades placed by the English stopping their sugar supply. Beets provided a reliable domestic crop for sugar that quickly became popular in continental Europe and then later in the UK during the First World War in the UK.
It takes a long time to suck away at a Soor Ploom. Enough time to mull over all of the layered stories, the difficulties and the bitterness and the blood that formed it. And enough time to cast a calculating glance at your Northern English boyfriend as he innocently and obliviously pops one more handful of Midget Gems into his mouth. Perhaps I'll let him live this time...
