Nearchus, Christopher Columbus, Olivier de Serres, Benjamin Delessert, Louis Chambon... Famous or anonymous, each man has made his own contribution to the fascinating history of sugar.
Nearchus
Born in Crete around 360 BC, Nearchus was a close friend of Alexander the Great, and is considered as the “creator” of the maritime spice route. An excellent navigator, he was tasked with charting a new route between the Indus river and Persian Gulf in 325 BC to boost trade between India and Mesopotamia. The 120-ship fleet transported nearly 10,000 men.
It was probably during this journey, of which he left a written account, that he discovered sugar and revealed its existence to the West. Recalling an expression used by the Persians, he described it as a “reed that gives honey without bees”.
Christopher Columbus (1451-1506)
The discoverer of America, the illustrious Genoan explorer began “exporting” sugar from the second of his four voyages. One of the aims of the expedition that left Cadiz on 25 September 1493 was to found a colony on Hispaniola (current day Santo Domingo). Christopher Columbus introduced sugar cane plants to the island from the Canaries, where he stopped off before crossing the Atlantic (6 December 1492).
Nostradamus (1503-1566)
Best known for his prophesies, Michel de Nostredame was, first and foremost, an apothecary. It was in this capacity that the Frenchman, born in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence at the beginning of the 16th century, wrote a work on preserves in 1555, detailing the use of sugar and honey in producing confectionary.
Olivier de Serres (1539-1619)
Olivier de Serres is considered to be the father of agronomics. At a very young age, he took a scientific interest in agricultural techniques in the hope of improving crop yields. The large-scale silk industry developed in France under his impetus. He was also responsible for introducing maize and hops into France. And he was the first to experiment with the extraction of sugar from sugar beet, revealing the plant’s extraordinary resources.
Antonio Vazquez de Espinoza ( ? -1630)
This Spanish cleric took part in the evangelisation of the South American continent at the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century. Describing one of his journeys, he writes about the sugar cane and sugar mills of Chile, Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia and Paraguay.
Andreas Sigismund Marggraf (1709-1782)
This German chemist discovered that sugar beet contained “read sugar, totally identical” to that found in sugar cane. In 1745, he wrote a report on his chemical experiments that enabled him to extract sugar from sugar beet.
Franz Karl Achard (1753-1821)
A pupil of Marggraf, professor Achard continued the work begun by his mentor. In 1802, he built an experimental sugar beet processing plan, the first in the world, in Künern in Silesia (Germany). Everyday, the plant produced 2 kg of sugar from 70 kg of beets.
Antoine Parmentier (1737-1813)
Pharmacist, nutritionist, agronomist, hygienist... the name Antoine Parmentier is inseparable from the potato, the cultivation of which he encouraged in France. He also studied chestnuts, maize and, as a nutritionist, bread and grape sugar. In 1808, he revealed that the sugar content of grapes varied between 200 g and 350 g per litre depending on the maturity of the fruit. The only problem was that grape sugar, a fairly thick syrup, was difficult to crystallize because it contained sucrose, as well as fructose and glucose. The result: his extraction was too expensive and not profitable!
Benjamin Delessert (1773-1847)
Olivier de Serres, Marggraf and his pupil Achard were precursors of Delessert. However, it was Benjamin Delessert who first succeeded in extracting large quantities of sugar from sugar beet in the first years of the 19th century. Originally this business man had around twenty sugar refineries in France. However, the blockade led him to experiment with sugar beet. He was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur for his work.
Jacob Kristof Rad (19th century)
In 1843, this Czech confectioner produced the first lump sugar in the form of conical loaves. The method, which included several stages, was on a very small scale: he melted the sugar, poured the liquid sugar onto a tray, sawed the layer of sugar after it had set into strips and broke it into cubes. However, although the technical know-how was Jacob’s own, it was his wife Julianna who had the idea!
Louis de Vilmorin (1816-1860)
Biologist and chemist, Vilmorin’s work centred on the selection and cultivation of plants. He was the first to improve the shape and sugar content of sugar beets in the 1850s. He published a report on the subject in 1856 called “Note on the creation of a new species of beet root and an analysis of the hereditary nature of plants.”
Eugène François (19th century)
A grocer in rue Saint-Sébastien in Paris, Eugène François found the breaking process for sugar loaves unhygienic. From 1854, he began developing a mechanical process to produce regular and clean sugar lumps using a breaking and sawing system. He succeeded 20 years later when he patented the "casseuse François" in 1875.
Théophile Adant (1852-1938)
A master apprentice in Antwerp, Belgium, Théophile Adant developed a turbine at the end of the 1880s to form caster sugar sheets. He was the first to succeed in crystallizing sugar using an industrial method. The crystallization took 8 to 12 hours. As well as sugar sheets, Théophile Adant developed a series of tools to industrialise the Jacob Rad process, including drying, sawing into strips and then into symmetrical lumps.
Louis Chambon (1861-1932)
The "Chaîne Chambon", named after its inventor Louis Chambon, brought about a small revolution in the sugar industry. Born in Ardèche, and a graduate of the École des Arts et Métiers, this mechanical engineer developed a system for pressing moistened granulated sugar into moulds.