In the kitchen, sugar is a versatile ingredient.
Because sweetness is one of a small handful of basic taste sensations, cooks add sugar to dishes of all kinds to fill out and balance their flavor. Sugar interferes usefully with the coagulation of proteins, and so tenderizes the gluten network of baked goods
Provide it with some moisture and high heat, and we can coax from it a broad range of shapeable consistencies, creamy and chewy and brittle and rock hard.
The story of sugar is not all sweetness and light. Its appeal was a destructive force