I just read an interesting passage in the biography of Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow: "A small revolution in consumer tastes had turned the Caribbean into prized acreage for growing sugarcane to sweeten the coffee, tea and cocoa imbibed in fashionable European capitals." My question is, when did the British start drinking tea? What did they drink before? Before sugarcane was grown in the Caribbean, what was the source of sugar for cakes and confections ? Were those foods less common before?
I once saw an exhibit on Food in the Time of Shakespeare, and it said that garlic, onions and savory prepararions hadn't entered the English kitchen yet, and meats were often prepared with sweet flavors, like turkey and stuffing with raisins. How did they manage glazes and similar preparations without sugar?
While you wait for an answer to your specific question, you may enjoy browsing the section of the FAQ on foods in the past. There isn't something there that directly talks about your questions, but there's some other great stuff along the same lines.
To begin with tea, it was first introduced to Europe via Portugal in the early 16th century. The first recorded mention of tea drank by an Englishman was in a 1615 letter by Richard Wickham at the East India Company office in Japan, requesting tea from a merchant in Macao with a familiarity that suggests it was already being drank before then. Tea would remain a luxury item until the 19th century when the price of tea fell enough in Europe that it was cheaply available. Coffee spread through Europe at roughly the same time and speed.
Sugar was still available from sugarcane in Europe even in medieval times, but transport was a long and arduous journey from India or the Middle East and the production of sugarcane was highly labor-intensive. Sugar only started becoming cheaper in the 15th and 16th century when they began utilizing slave labor en masse. Honey was also available, but sugar beets wouldn't be discovered until 1747 thanks to German chemist Andreas Marggraf and it would be decades before a sugar beet industry appeared.
The food of Shakespeare's England was actually more similar to modern day than you might expect. This was after the discovery of the New World and the Colombian Exchange, so new foods and spices were slowly filtering in. The major ones like potatoes and tomatoes wouldn't be popular for a while, but turkey had become a major part of the Tudor diet. Enhanced trade was gracing the tables of the upper class with citrus fruits, pomegranates, and raspberries. And yes, onions and garlic were very available since medieval times!
They did prepare meats with sweet foods as well. Part of this was taste preference and part was a belief in balancing the "humors" in the body, fluids that were believed to cause illness if unbalanced. I've made some medieval recipes and the foods of the upper classes tend to be rich in herbs and spices with mild sweetness, rather than being odd or unbalanced.