The demise of sugar cubes

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

Re: Cecil’s column, Why do you seldom see sugar cubes in restaurants anymore?, Originally published March 30, 1979; re-published on-line today (March 8, 2012):

He remarks that these are still being made, but not used nearly as much any more. Cecil waxes nostalgic for the little cubies, writing:

[QUOTE=The Master:]
Some people, though, still like cubes — sucking on them is an indescribable rush — and in some quarters they’re considered more elegant. So the sugar companies continue to make them. Personally I like a good cube when I can get one, but I’m resigned to the advance of progress.
[/quote]

Yes, certain things are a rush to suck on.
But we can’t allow these little confections to fade into the mists of time, just because some restauranteurs don’t appreciate the importance of sucking on sugar cubes. There were actually important reasons for sucking on sugar cubes!

Dopers (hint hint) of a certain age will remember this well. Sugar cubes were the preferred, indeed ideal, delivery device for the administration of, (ahem), certain pharmaceutical concoctions – upon which, a good time was had by all. Why, I got started on this path even at the tender young age of, uh . . . Around 6 or so, I think it was!

Yes, indeed! These were the flavorful little absorbent blocks by which we, of that era, got our Sabin Oral Polio Vaccines!

What will come of the world when sugar cubes are no more? The little kiddies are supposed to get their medicine on little blocks of styrofoam?

2

I don’t recall ever getting an oral vaccine. All the ones I remember have been hypodermics.

3

The oral and injected vaccines have different risk profiles, making one or the other the safer vaccine depending on environmental factors (in particular, apparently, the prevalence of wild polio virus in the ambient environment). In the United States, the oral vaccine was used from 1962 until 2000 (in U.K., until 2004). It might still be used in third-world places where there is still a risk of wild polio infection.

From Wikipedia article: Polio Vaccine, Oral Vaccine section. (Includes picture of sugar cubes!)

I was just the right age to get BOTH: The Salk (injected) vaccine, during the mass public vaccination campaigns when it first came out, and then the Sabin (Oral) vaccine just a few years later during the mass public vaccination campaigns when that came out.

Supposedly, the Salk vaccine might require periodic boosters, kind of like tetanus shots do now, whereas the Sabin vaccine had the advantage that once you had the initial dose (or maybe it was three doses?) it would supposedly last for life, without need for boosters.

4

I’m not doubting that they were once. I simply haven’t had one in modern times. I don’t think we need to worry about saving sugar cubes for vaccinations.

5

I think this is a clear example of the value of a supply side approach to the problem. If the delivery device is in danger of becoming extinct, then clearly we must increase the supply of what it was used to deliver.

Of course for the record, I want to make it very clear that I have no idea what you’re referring to. :cool:

6

Everyone knew Bjork would go solo one day.

7

But what if there is a sudden epidemic and our sugar cube mines are all shut down? :eek:

8

When sugar cubes are outlawed only outlaws will have a sugar rush.

9

Heh.

I still see sugarcubes in the more rustic (read: cheap) cafes, especially brown (demerara) cubes, but I suspect hygiene concerns have led restaurants to move to the “loose sugar in a paper tube” option instead.

10

How about this idea: sugar cubes started to disappear in restaurants about the time artificial sweeteners started appearing on tables. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Sweet & Low (or Equal, or Splenda) in cube form. Just packets, at least for restaurant use (I’ve seen it in “spoonable” bulk form for home use). Offering both sugar and artificial sweetener in packets allows restaurants to just stuff both together in the same compact little dish/holder. Offering sugare cubes would basically require an extra dish on the table.

11

You people do know, do you not, that sugar cubes are still sold in most supermarkets?

12

Oh god. Another fanatic who thinks that outside of the internet there is this fairy tale land they call “reality.” :rolleyes: :slight_smile:

13

Indeed I keep them stocked at home for champagne cocktails. A few drops of bitters on a sugar sugar cube put that in the champagne flute add champagne. Mrs. gazpacho needs a cocktail while I have a Manhattan which she for some reason thinks tastes like Robitussin.

14

Oh, you reminded me of something - absinthe. Isn’t the traditional method to pour it over a strainer that contains a sugar cube?

15

When sugar cubes disappear from the landscape, California schoolchildren will have a difficult time making their mandatory sixth-grade California Mission model.

Maybe they’ll use the “loose sugar in a paper tube” and submit models of the log cabin where Abraham Lincoln was born…

16

When sugar cubes are outlawed, only Sugar Daddies will have Sugar Babes.

Today, maybe. Tomorrow? Better buy your lifetime supply now, while you still can!
Physical law of the universe: When you find a product you like, buy a lifetime supply because they will stop making it.

(You will know the End Times are upon us when California Kidz are reduced to building their Mission models with little white Styrofoam cubes.)

ETA: P.S., That land of “reality” alleged to exist outside the Net is hardly my notion of a “fairy tale” place.

17

Yeah, the last time I bought sugar cubes was to drink absinthe. They sell sugar cubes at BevMo!

18

I had to get a polio booster at the age of 9. I was told, repeatedly, that I’d get the vaccine on a sugar cube. No pain, no trouble, just a yummy sugar rush, right?

They lied to me. The foul-tasting liquid was dripped right into my mouth. And it was mixed with the bitter, bitter taste of resentment, the resentment that comes of being denied a sugar cube that was rightfully mine.

Those bastards!

19

Gaak! They really did that? And you were age 9?
They do that drip into the mouth thing for infants! I saw it done when I got my vaccine on the sugar cube. That was back in 1962 when it first came out, as I described above. People who are old enough to be able to take a sugar cube were supposed to get sugar cubes!

Next time, at least ask for Styrofoam!

20

Not the absinthe. It went first into the glass (a cone shape with a short stem) then a flat, decoratively serrated spoon was laid over the rim with a sugar cube on it. Cold water was poured through it, dissolving the sugar and diluting the absinthe into a cloudy green.