Sugar

6000 BC
Sugar cane is already known in eastern Asia, from where it spreads to India and Persia.

600 BC
The Persians develop a sugar processing method: hot sugar cane juice is poured into conical clay or wooden vessels. Substances that do not contain sugar drip through an opening at the tip of the cone in the form of a syrup, leaving behind the crystallising sugar compound. Sugar loaf is the result.

1100
Central Europeans experience sugar for the first time thanks to the Crusades. An account of a voyage contains the following sentence: "In the fields of the plain at Tripoli we found a honey reed, which the inhabitants call 'zucra'".

Initial imports bring sugar to Europe, where it quickly becomes very popular among kings and princes.

From about 1500
Sugar cane is cultivated in large plantations worldwide and is shipped to Europe. Sugar is still an expensive commodity.

1747
Andreas Sigismund Marggraf discovers that the field mangel contains the same amount of sugar as sugar cane.

1801
After Marggraf's pupil and successor Franz Carl Achard processes sugar from beets for the first time, the world's first factory for producing beet sugar is built at Cunern/Silesia.

From about 1850
The competition between cane and beet sugar causes a drastic fall in price and sugar becomes an everyday commodity.