While conducting research on coal tar derivatives at Johns Hopkins University, scientists Constantine Fahlberg and Ira Remsen accidentally discovered saccharin, the world's first commercially viable artificial sweetener. Offering intense sweetness without caloric value or chemical relation to sugar, saccharin achieved immediate industrial success, particularly during wartime sugar shortages and the subsequent rise of the modern diet food industry. It marked the definitive separation of taste from natural agriculture through industrial organic chemistry.

The creation of a synthetic, non-nutritive sweetness derived directly from industrial coal tar deeply fascinated late-nineteenth-century Decadent and Symbolist poets. Writers used the concept of artificial sweetness as a potent poetic metaphor to explore the triumph of human artifice over organic nature, the hyper-refinement of urban consumer culture, and the deceptive, hollow promises of modern industrial civilization.