I've been reading article about sugar recently and figured out that sugar from sugar cane was brought from Indonesia to Europe around 1500. However, white refined sugar as we know it from today was spread in Napoleon era. What people used before? Did they bake pastry using honey? How common or luxury sugar was back in times. I am just surprised because we have many sweets, baked stuff around nowadays, but I doubt it was common lets say 200 years ago.
Edit: I remember reading an old thread about this a while back. Here it is: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/383oqi/how_was_food_sweetened_before_the_discovery_of/
Theres an excellent book called "Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History" by Sidney Mintz that I would highly recommend if you're interested about the history of sugar.
Before sugar cane was grown and processed in masse in the Caribbean and the New World, people in Europe would use honey and dates as ways to sweeten their foods. The very wealthy could buy processed white and brown sugar that was imported from Asia, but it was very expensive. It wasn't until sugar cane plantations sprang up in the Caribbean and New World that sugar became more readily available, and then in the 1700s when sugar beets started being grown in Europe as a more efficient way to refine sugar. Around the 1850s, the price of sugar got to a point where just about everyone could afford it, and many bought it because it was a readily available and cheap source of calories.
Not a complete answer, but sugar (in the form of sugar cane) was known in Europe from the twelfth century, when it was brought back by returning crusaders. I'm not sure it was ever refined though and certainly was never widespread. Albert of Aachen has a wonderful passage about how the crusaders used to suck on sugar cane as a treat while traveling through Palestine in his crusade chronicle.