because of course you’ve wondered where candy sprinkles come from 

fourpoundsflour:

I’ve looked in to the history of candy sprinkles before, after I found the earliest American birthday cake recipe from 1870 (which you can see here.)  But it turns out the history of the sprinkle goes back about a thousand years earlier, to early Middle-Eastern cooking.  In reference to a late 10th-century Baghdad cookbook, Tim Richardson, author of Sweets: A History of Candy, writes:

“Small pieces of nuts, vegetables and spices were habitually sprinkled over the dishes, savoury and sweet, in this cookbook: pomegranate seeds, fresh coriander, pieces of cucumber, celery, rue, pistachios, or almonds.  In addition to their decorative role - colour, often supplied by saffron, is discussed in every recipe — these sprinklings probably fulfilled a medicinal purpose.  This is of interest to the international confectionery historian because the idea was later taken up in medieval Europe, when sweets in the form of comfits—small, sugarcoated seeds — were used to decorate both savoury and sweet dishes in the same way…It sounds a tortured comparison, but the practice of sticking glace cherries, angelica, chocolate Smarties of M&Ms on cakes really can be traced back to this Arab example.”