Following the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, European Crusaders in the Levant discovered sophisticated sugar refining operations in cities such as Tyre, Acre, and Tripoli that had been maintained under Muslim rule for centuries. The Crusader states adopted and expanded sugar plantation agriculture using both local labor and enslaved workers, shipping refined sugar back to Europe as a valuable luxury. This direct exposure to large-scale sugar production planted the seeds for Europe's eventual obsession with sugar and its later colonial plantation systems in the Atlantic world.

Crusade chronicles and later troubadour poetry from southern France began incorporating sugar and Eastern sweets as symbols of both exotic luxury and moral danger, reflecting ambivalence about foreign indulgence. This literary motif of the seductive Eastern sweet would echo through centuries of European poetry, from Chaucer's references to sugar-plums to Milton's Paradise Lost, where sweetness becomes bound up with temptation and fall.