Down the Rabbit Hole

As established in Part I, Queen Elizabeth I had toothaches, tooth decay and discoloration. But why? The internet thinks it knows:

“Elizabeth had a notoriously sweet tooth, and had a particular taste for candied violets. Eventually, the sugar cane caused many of her teeth to go black.”

“According to the accounts of the time, the Queen had a notoriously sweet tooth and was especially fond of candied violets.“

“Elizabeth was known for her sweet tooth and loved candied violets. Sugar cane eventually caused her teeth to turn black.“

“One of the many sweet foods that Elizabeth was partial to was marzipan.“

“…as well as marchpane, an almond paste candy most often known to us as marzipan.”

and on and on…

A Little Bit About Sugar

Sugar was known in England before Elizabeth’s reign, but it was costly to import and process from cane to crystal. Sugarcane probably originated in New Guinea and was cultivated in the Middle East and India well before Europeans tasted it. But once they did they wasted no time in obtaining more and more, spurring exploration, colonization and the development of chattel slavery. During the Tudor era, the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Italians and French all had sugar plantations in places like Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. England eventually colonized Barbados (1625) and Jamaica (1655) during the Stuart era but until then sugar needed to be imported (or taken from captured Spanish warships).

Sugar as Medicine

Besides tasting good, sugar found a place in 16th century medicine, which was based on the four humors. Disease was thought to be caused by an imbalance in these humors and diet could bring about balance. Sugar was seen as warming and dry. Housewives could buy cookbooks which told them how to prepare dishes to treat particular maladies. This is a thorough look at medical recipes in the Early Modern era. This book, The London Practice of Physick by Thomas Willis was written after Elizabeth’s time but contains many remedies using sugar.

Sugar-sweetened dishes became popular among the nobility and nascent middle class. Sweetmeats (candied fruits and nuts), candied flowers (more on that below), cakes and gingerbread delighted banquet guests, as did artistic sugar-work sculptures. (This is a good look at banqueting and sugar.)

So yes, Elizabeth probably had a sweet tooth. The whole continent did.

Elizabeth’s Favorites?

The idea that Elizabeth particularly loved marchpane (or marzipan) seems to come from the record of gifts given to her on New Year’s Day. People did give it it her in great amounts, so it’s reasonable to assume she enjoyed it. (Or she said she liked it once to be polite and could never get away from it again.) So that’s one mystery solved.

Candied violets, on the other hand, were a bit harder to track down. There are so many confident websites repeating this uncited “fact.” I could find no mention of these purple delights in any of the well-regarded books about Elizabeth (including the above collection of gifts) but the internet was insistent. Finally I tracked down the first internet mention of Elizabeth and candied violets:

There’s a cute scene in “Shadow of Night“, Deborah Harkness’ (much improved) sequel of “A Discovery of Witchess“, (sic) where the male protagonist (a vampire, among other things) chides an aging Queen Elizabeth (as in Elizabeth I. Not the current one we know as “Granny”) for her overindulgence in candied violets that have rotted her teeth.

So I checked the text of the book:

Now, author Harkness is a historian, and has written two scholarly books, neither of which mention candied violets. It’s certainly possible that in her research for Shadow of Night she ran into some juicy primary source about Elizabeth that has never been cited anywhere else.

At any rate, the references to candied violets started to pop up here and there starting in 2018…which was when the Discovery of Witches TV series premiered.

By 2022 this business about the candied violets was uniformly presented as fact, without citing Harkness…or anyone else.

A 2023 archive of this page on the UKs National Portrait Gallery site even offers the following tantalizing information:

So, it’s possible that Harkness and the author of this page had access to these lists, lists which are not digitized or otherwise available to the public. Trust me, I’ve looked.

Another Elizabeth?

Let’s add a little more confusion to the matter, shall we? Do you know who really, demonstrably, provably loved candied violets? Empress Elizabeth of Austria (24 December 1837 – 10 September 1898.) It’s true! Is it possible that folks are mixing up their monarchs? Netflix released a documentary about her in 2022, so she was definitely in the public eye recently.

The Verdict: Is it possible Elizabeth Tudor’s favorite sweets were candied violets? Sure. But without seeing those lists, I’m going to stay on the fence.

Next: Tudor Toothcare and the Black Tooth Trend!