Tasting history one sweet at a time: a West Virginia shop preserves five centuries of confectionery
In the United States, on the corner of a historic main street with only 30 households in the West Virginia town of Harpers Ferry, the little shop trading as True Treats Historic Candy is perhaps unique in the world — a heritage space stocking more than 500 historic confections from across time and continents.
Founder Susan Benjamin opened the shop in 2010, after years of writing research books on the history of American confectionery. Author of 'Sweet as Sin: The Unwrapped Story of How Candy Became America's Favorite Pleasure', Benjamin conceived the shop as a research lab. Customers buy and take home, but every product on the shelf is accompanied by the story of where it came from.
'Understanding human culture through food is one of the oldest anthropological methods,' Benjamin told an Atlas Obscura podcast interview this week. 'Candy is a cultural bridge — from the 17th-century Caribbean sugar plantations to the medieval Seljuk-era sweets of the Middle East, from the honey and pistachio cakes of ancient Egypt to modern Japan's matcha-coated chocolates, every sweet is the beginning of a story.'
Among the historic products on the shelf, some are genuinely striking: the honey-and-almond balls documented in the Roman Empire (the ancestor of helva on the modern Turkish and Greek menu), turmeric-flavoured fig paste from 12th-century Central Asia that travelled along the Silk Road into Europe, and 'Mary Lincoln's Pickled Limes' — a fermented lime candy popular in the American colonies of the 1700s.
Benjamin says a meaningful share of the shop's business model runs through group tours and educational programmes. Around 22,000 visitors come each year; a quarter of them are part of teacher-coordinated school trips. Howard University's Caribbean Studies department uses Benjamin's shop as a fieldwork stop when telling students the story of chocolate's arrival in Europe.
Harpers Ferry itself is also a significant heritage site in American history. The town is where John Brown's famous 1859 anti-slavery armed raid took place. The historic centre, preserved by the National Park Service, marks one of the events that led toward the start of the American Civil War. True Treats sits in the middle of that main street.
Some items in Benjamin's collection are produced on special order because of how difficult they are to make. Examples include the 'maple drops' popular in the American colonies of the 19th century, or the 'molasses and ginger balls' said to have been consumed during China's Sui dynasty (581-618 CE), which are sourced from a handful of small east-coast US suppliers who reproduce historical recipes.
A museum-shop model has parallels in Europe. Brussels's Maison Antoine Frites tells the story of Belgian fries from 1857; Italy's Acetaia Giusti in Modena has produced traditional balsamic vinegar since 1605. The difference at True Treats is that it presents such a wide collection under one roof at a global scale.
Benjamin also sees the shop as a social-sharing space. 'When people walk in, they say 'this candy was around when I was a child', and then they share stories they heard from their mother or grandmother. Candy is a tool for inter-generational conversation. This shop feeds that conversation.'
As the Atlas Obscura podcast also notes, the shop's digital-collection project began in 2024. The history, social context and the path each candy took to reach the present day is being documented in a digital archive. The project is moving forward with support from the West Virginia Humanities Council and is expected to be published as a public digital collection within the next three years.