Sugar cube

History

Historically, sugar was shipped as hard sugarloaves, which were difficult to break into uniform pieces, often requiring sharp tools or sugar nips. Lev Tolstoy described dunking a leftover sugar bit in tea in his work "Where Love Is, God Is". Swiss inventor Jakub Kryštof Rad began making the first sugar cubes in the early 1840s after his wife hurt herself chopping a sugarloaf; he pressed moist sugar into a tray resembling an ice cube tray and let the cubes dry.

Despite a patent in 1843, his business failed. Almost 30 years later, Eugen Langen of Pfeifer & Langen used a centrifuge to produce sugar blocks that were cut into cubes. Henry Tate acquired exclusive British rights from Langen on 13 March 1875, starting large-scale manufacturing; he faced personal financial difficulties, even pulling his daughter from boarding school. The factory produced 214 tons in 1878 and 1,366 tons in 1888.

In 1880, Tate acquired rights to a Belgian process by Gustav Adant, which produced sugar tablets on rotating machines sliced into cubes (called "dominoes"). This process replaced Langen's in 1891 and was a huge success; standard London quotes for refined sugar were expressed in Tate's cubes. Adant's process still makes extremely hard cubes popular in Belgium, France, and Arab countries, e.g., at Raffinerie Tirlemontoise since 1902. The first process to mold cubes without cutting was invented in Boston by Charles H. Hersey ("Hersey drum", 1879); some units, modified in 1929 for fancy shapes, remain in use.

Manufacturing

Granulated sugar is slightly moistened (2–3%), placed into a mold, and heated to allow moisture to escape. The cube's firmness, density, and dissolution speed are controlled by crystal size, water or steam amount, molding pressure, and drying speed.

Input material typically requires a wide size distribution (from 500 microns upward) for stability. Highly automated lines can process up to 50 tons per day. Three common processes produce soft cubes: the Vibro process (Swedish Sugar Corporation, late 1950s) uses vibration and a heat radiation oven; the Chambon process (France, 1949) uses a rotating molding unit and vertical dryer; the Elba process is similar to Chambon.

Use

Sugar cubes were and are mostly used to sweeten tea and coffee; Rad's original pieces were sold as "tea-sugar". Their popularity has declined due to artificial sweeteners and the shift from filtered coffee to cappuccino-like drinks, making them a niche product in bars or at formal afternoon tea. Specialty uses include the classical Old Fashioned cocktail with a sugar cube infused with Angostura bitters; absinthe service with a cube on a slotted spoon over the glass, dissolved by a slow water drip to create a louche effect (a bohemian version sets the soaked cube aflame).

Sugar cubes can be infused with drugs for calibrated oral delivery, used for the polio vaccine and for LSD distribution ("cube" became slang for the latter). Colored and sculpted cubes shaped as flowers and animals are marketed in Japan. Cubes are also used to visually represent sugar content in products, such as soft drinks, by building pyramids photographed in front of the product; experiments showed this method persuaded people to consume less sugar.

Arts

The sugar-cube metaphor in architecture dates to 1922, proposed by Walter Gropius, recurring every five years with meanings from regimented design to "unity in variety" to whitewashed Cycladic facades. A monument with a sugar cube on top stands in Dačice, Czech town where Rad's first factory was located. Russian artist Leonid Tishkov's 2012 multimedia project "Kubvechnosti" (Cube of Eternity) linked the sugar cube to Russian avant-garde geometric abstraction, exploring the childhood of suprematist Kazimir Malevich (whose father managed Ukrainian sugar refineries) and implying Malevich played with early machine-pressed cubes.

Tishkov constructed architektons from stacked sugar cubes, using their ephemeral nature as a metaphor for the failure of avant-garde utopian ideals under the Soviet regime. In 1936, surrealist Meret Oppenheim created the Sugar Ring, a commercial sugar cube encased in a gold-plated silver ring, highlighting sugar's associations with luxury, addiction, and chemical volatility. Irish sculptor Brendan Jamison creates architecture-themed pieces from sugar cubes.

In the United States, sugar cubes have been used in educational architectural modeling, notably in California mission projects where fourth-graders built miniature scale models of historic Spanish missions.

Did You Know?

• In 1923, German wholesaler Karl Hellmann started packaging pairs of cubes in individual wrappings with advertisements or collectible pictures.
• The typical retail packaging weight is 0.5 kilogram (1 pound) or 1 kilogram (2 pounds).
• Playing card suits-shaped pieces are produced under the name "bridge cube sugar".