The word ‘sweetmeat' is considered to be old fashioned; some dictionaries label it as being ‘archaic'. In the past, any sweet delicacy — candy, a piece of fruit coated with sugar, etc. — was called sweetmeat.
The word ‘meat' in ‘sweetmeat' has nothing to do with animal flesh. In Old English, the word ‘mete', from which we get the modern ‘meat', meant ‘food'. All items of food, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian, were called ‘meat'. The original meaning of ‘sweetmeat' was ‘sweet food'.
The origins of confectionery date back to about 2000BC when the ancient Egyptians satisfied their cravings for something sweet by combining fruits and nuts with honey. Liquorice juice, extracted from the root of the leguminous ‘Sweet Root’, is known to have been used for medicinal purposes at the same time. The forerunner of today’s Turkish delight was an uncompromising confection of boiled grape juice and starch cut into squares. Over 3000 years ago the Aztecs in Mexico used the cocoa bean to make a bitter drink. However, it took 1500 years for that drink to be sweetened with sugar.
Before the Renaissance era, confections typically consisted of exotic imports from the Mediterranean and the Middle East such as almonds, citrus fruits, rosewater, spices, and sometimes, sugar. The exclusivity and high cost of ingredients made confectionery a respected trade. While sugarcane had been known in Europe since Roman times, it had previously been dismissed in favor of honey as a sweetener. It became more widely used after Arabs and Persians developed the process that produces refined sugar.
Sugar became more common in Europe starting in the 1420s, after Portuguese colonies began to cultivate sugarcane and overtook imports from the Middle East.[4] The price of sugar dropped significantly after New World imports began to dominate the market in the mid-sixteenth century. This allowed for the increased production of sweetmeats as desserts, and the confectioner could expand his market to people beyond the upper classes.
"Sweetmeats" is a term that encompasses a wide range of confections prepared with sugar. Some of them included quince, marmalade, syrup, conserves and biscuits.
Renaissance medicine partly relied on diet. Dieticians recommended consuming sugar to prevent adverse effects believed to arise from other foods. Certain properties were assigned to food, and a food's nutritional value was determined by its taste and supposed effect on the body. Sugar, for example, was categorized as "hot and moist" – complementary to the human body.
The apothecary was the main purveyor of sugar-based concoctions until the confectioner began to sell sugar as a food instead of a medicine in the later Renaissance. Some typical products were syrups, preserves of herbs and roots, floral sugars, lozenges, and comfits. Sugar would be used to preserve and flavour otherwise unpalatable medicines and to make carrier substances for medicines, such as enhanced marmalades.
It originated in court in the early 1500s and quickly became a status symbol among English nobility. The English sweet banquet was an early form of the modern dessert course, consisting of sweet confections, spiced drinks, and complex sugar work served after the main meal. It evolved from the medieval "void": a post-dinner course where small treats were served after the table had been cleared, or "voided."
Sweetmeats frequently served in banquets included fruits preserved in sugar syrup, marmalades, moulded fruit pastes, comfits, conserves, and biscuits. Quince marmalade was a common feature of Elizabethan-era banquets, served in tandem with other preserves. A common practice after a meal would be to "seal" or placate the stomach with quince marmalade.