Before Sugar and Spice: What Were Medieval European Girls Made Of?

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The English nursery rhyme "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" has a clear answer: sugar and spice and all things nice. But someone pointed out a genuine historical wrinkle — before the early modern period, sugar beets hadn't spread across Europe and exotic spices were luxury imports from Asia, far beyond the reach of ordinary people. So what exactly were girls made of in pre-medieval Europe?

The thread drew in historians, trivia enthusiasts, and people who just wanted to make a joke. Answers ranged from bone marrow and animal fat to Adam's rib to the complete elemental composition of the human body. One commenter noted that the concept of "childhood" — and therefore "girls" as a category — wasn't invented until the modern era. Another made the more thought-provoking observation that in colonial-era Britain, sugar and spice arrived in the home at exactly the same moment childhood was being "discovered," which might mean the nursery rhyme was accidentally sound history all along.

Then someone noticed that sugar plus spice plus something nice equals masala chai. The thread never quite recovered from that.

Comments

It’s common knowledge that girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice, but in pre-medieval Europe — where spices couldn’t be grown locally and sugar beets hadn’t yet spread — how exactly were girls made? (Sugar beets: the crop used to produce beet sugar, only widely cultivated in Europe after the 18th century.)

女の子がお砂糖とスパイスと素敵なものでできていることは周知の事実ですが、香辛料を自国で栽培できず、甜菜も広まっていない中世以前のヨーロッパでは、女の子はどうやって作られていたのだろうか

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Prehistoric humans ate animal bone marrow as a prized, nutrient-rich food, and animal fat was similarly valued for its minerals. So in medieval Europe, girls were made from those plus sheer guts — producing sturdy, robust women valued for their vitality. (Very frontier-settlement energy)

有史以前の人間は動物の骨髄を栄養価の高いものとして食べていた訳でありまして、動物性の脂も同様にミネラル等もあり重宝されておりましたそのため中世ヨーロッパではそれらと度胸を混ぜた恰幅とガタイの良い女の子が生まれ、その生命力ゆえ好まれて来たのですね（辺境並感）

According to Ariès, until the modern era there were no ‘children’ — only small laborers. (Philippe Ariès: French historian who argued in Centuries of Childhood (1960) that ‘childhood’ as a concept was a modern invention.) So of course they needed to be tough.

アリエスによると、近代まで子供はおらず小さい労働力しかいなかったので、子供は屈強である必要があったんですね

You’ve got it backwards. Pre-medieval Europe didn’t make girls FROM sugar and spice — they broke girls DOWN into sugar and spice and put them to use.

逆です女の子をお砂糖とスパイスと素敵なものに分解して運用していたのが中世以前のヨーロッパです

A time-altering girl was born. Because the Professor added something extra… (A nod to The Powerpuff Girls — in the original story, Professor Utonium accidentally added ‘Chemical X’ to the sugar, spice, and everything nice, creating the girls.)

過去を改変する系の女の子が生まれたんだよ博士が余計なものを入れちゃったから……

They hung from trees as fruit. The fact that things growing on trees are still classified as ‘fruit’ and things from the ground as ‘vegetables’ is a remnant of that era.

果物として木にぶら下がっていました。今でも木になるのは果物、地面から生えるのは野菜、と分類されているのはその名残りです。

35L water, 20kg carbon, 4L ammonia, 1.5kg lime, 800g phosphorus, 250g salt, 100g saltpeter, 80g sulfur, 7.5g fluorine, 5g iron, 3g silicon, and trace amounts of 15 additional elements.

水35L、炭素20kg、アンモニア4L、石灰1.5kg、リン800ｇ、塩分250ｇ、硝石100ｇ、イオウ80ｇ、フッ素7.5ｇ、鉄5ｇ、ケイ素3ｇ、少量の15の元素

If you keep something in your country for over three months it qualifies as domestically produced, so I think that’s probably how they did it.

自国で3ヶ月以上置いておくと国産になるので、それで作られていたんだと思う。

Either the stork brought them, or they were born from the cabbage patch. Both methods can deliver cute girls, not just babies.

コウノトリさんが運んできてくれてたか、キャベツ畑から生まれてきてたんだよ。上記2つは赤ちゃん以外に可愛い女の子を連れてきてくれる。

Sugar, like spices, was the spoils of colonization — it spread as an aristocratic privilege around the time of Queen Elizabeth I. So girls were ‘made by offering up war plunder.’ Probably defeated commanders’ heads and things like that.

お砂糖も香辛料と同じく、植民地進出で得られた「勝ち組の収穫物」で、エリザベス女王のころに貴族の特権として広まったとかつまり女の子は「分捕り品を貢いで作るもの」敵将の首とかそういうものでできている多分

Apparently they were made from the rib of a sleeping man. Because it’s not good for a person to be alone, and a fitting helper was needed.

寝ている男性のあばら骨から取られて作られてたみたいですよ。人が一人で居るのは良くないから、相応しい助け手として。

Honey — which goes back to Greek mythology — could sub for sugar, but spice is trickier. If spice is what produces that alluring, intoxicating quality in girls, I wonder if wine or mead could fill in for it.

砂糖はギリシャ神話にも登場する蜂蜜で代用できるとして、スパイス難しい…。女の子が有する妖艶という名の刺激性を生み出すのがスパイスなれば、葡萄酒や、蜂蜜酒等の酒ならスパイスの代わりになってくれるかどうかですかね。

Mustard, caraway, silphium, and honey — something along those lines. (Note: in pre-sugar Europe, texts would describe sugar as ‘a kind of honey.’) Oh — silphium was a legendary spice beloved by ancient Romans. It went extinct. (Silphium: an herb from ancient Cyrene, now Libya, overexploited to extinction possibly as early as the 1st century AD.)

マスタードとキャラウェイとシルフィウムと蜂蜜とかその辺。 ※欧州は、マジで砂糖がない時代、遠方に存在する砂糖という物体について『蜂蜜の一種』的に説明してる ※シルフィウム:古代ローマ人から絶大な支持を誇ったという幻のスパイス。絶滅した。

In Britain, sugar and spices only became widespread after 18th-century colonialism — the same era as the Industrial Revolution, also called the era of ’the discovery of childhood.’ So the concept of ‘girls (as cute and worthy of protection)’ was born at the same moment sugar and spice arrived in the home. The nursery rhyme turns out to be historically sound.

英国ではお砂糖もスパイスも、18世紀以降の植民地政策によって普及したはずで、それは産業革命とその反動の時代で「子供の発見」の時代とも言われるわけですから、「（可愛くて守られるべき）女の子」という概念はお砂糖とスパイスが家庭にやってきた時に誕生したという妥当な時代考証なんですよね。

Until childhood was ‘discovered,’ children were just ‘small adults.’ So the correct answer is: girls didn’t exist.

子供時代が発見されるまで子供は「小さな大人」であったので「女の子は存在しなかった」が正解

There’s GARLIC! The definitive spice of the medieval European commoner: garlic from morning. Garlic in the soup. Garlic on the meat. Garlic on the bread. Anti-spoilage, antibacterial, anti-fatigue, cold prevention, demon repellent — a full feature set. ‘Your eyes are like the stars’ won’t cut it as a pickup line anymore. Try ‘Your breath looks plague-resistant’ instead.

ニンニクがあるだろ！中世ヨーロッパ庶民御用達のスパイスといえばニンニク（ガーリック）。朝からニンニク。スープにニンニク。肉にニンニク。パンにもニンニク。防腐、抗菌、疲労、風邪予防、悪霊退散の各種機能てんこ盛り。君の瞳は星のようだ、では口説けない。君の口、疫病に強そうだね、でいけよ

In pre-medieval Europe, honey was probably doing a lot of the heavy lifting 🍯🐝 There are records of monasteries keeping bees and producing mead and other honey-based drinks 🍯🥂

中世以前のヨーロッパなら蜂蜜が役立っていた可能性が🍯🐝 修道院でもミツバチ飼って、蜂蜜酒ミードなどを作っていた記録もありますし🍯🥂

Roses, honey, and the morning dew of spring ✨

薔薇と蜂蜜と春の朝露✨

Wait, just occurred to me — sugar, spice, and everything nice… isn’t that basically masala chai…?

ふと思ったけど、お砂糖とスパイスと素敵なものって割とマサラチャイでは...?

If ’nice things’ = milk → masala chai. If ’nice things’ = wine → mulled wine. I feel like there are more options here.

素敵なものがミルク → マサラチャイ素敵なものがワイン → ホットワイン他にもあり得そうな気がしてきた

Could also make carrot cake, pain d’épices, sangria, ginger tea, or chili prawns.

キャロットケーキやパンデピスやサングリアやジンジャーティーやエビチリもできそう

The original lyric is ‘and all that’s nice’ — meaning ’everything’ — so I think it becomes a masala chai-based free-for-all hotpot.

原文「And all that's nice」で「何もかも」なのでマサラチャイベース闇鍋になる気がする

So that’s why the Age of Exploration set sail for India.

だからインドを目指して大航海時代が始まったと。

Mix it all together and you get an incredibly cute girl… or so we thought. What we actually made was chai.

全部混ぜるとむっちゃかわいい女の子が出来る・・・はずだったけど出来たのはチャイだった

Everything nice: Assam, second flush, Hatiari estate.

素敵なもの:アッサム(セカンドフラッシュ/ハティアリ農園)

Wait… we were masala chai this whole time…?

私達マサラチャイだったんだ…？

Pfft lol — but wait, there was no black tea in medieval Europe, so it’d become herbal tea instead. Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme ♪ (A reference to ‘Scarborough Fair,’ the traditional English ballad popularized by Simon & Garfunkel.)

ンフッwwwそうすると中世ヨーロッパに紅茶はないので、ハーブティーになりますね。パセリ・セージ・ローズマリー＆ターイム♪

So this is yatsuhashi. (Yatsuhashi: a traditional Kyoto confection made with rice flour, sugar, and cinnamon — one of Japan’s most iconic regional sweets.)

これは八ツ橋ですね

Yatsuhashi is also made of sugar, spice, and everything nice — so can we agree that yatsuhashi is also a girl?

八ツ橋もお砂糖とスパイスと素敵なものでできているので八ツ橋も女の子ってことでよろしいですか？

There’s even a character named Yuko, so yes, that checks out. (Yuko is the girl mascot on Nishio Yatsuhashi packaging, a well-known Kyoto souvenir brand.)

夕子という名があるくらいだからよろしいです。

Thanks for the info 🤝

教えてくれてありがとう🤝

I figured it was the original Coca-Cola — back when it still had coca leaf in it.

コカの入ったコーラかと

Damn it, now I can’t stop imagining a whole troupe of Indian dancers bursting out of masala chai at full speed… about as many as Buddha’s family had on staff, cycling through like a Bollywood sankin-kōtai. Help me, Lord Toshiie. (Sankin-kōtai: the Edo-period law requiring feudal lords to alternate residence between their home domain and Edo, involving massive ceremonial processions.)

ちくしょう結構な勢いでマサラチャイから飛び出して踊り出すインド人ダンサーズ考えちゃったじゃないか…ちなみにブッダの実家のダンサーくらいの人数が飛び出してきてダンサーの参勤交代みたいになってる助けて利家公

My take

My real question is about the taxes. Spices in medieval Europe were expensive enough to launch an entire Age of Exploration — someone was getting very rich off the tariffs.

#Funny #Culture

Source & translation note

Comments loosely translated for tone. Reactions collected from Togetter and X threads.

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