Scholarship on the place of sugar in modern history has taught us invaluable lessons on how food reveals the intricate interactions between capitalism, the social quality of eating, and the cultivation of taste. With a focus on sugar and its refinement, this paper explores the formative connections between agricultural production, population shifts, and cultural renditions of the cosmopolitan and the local in nineteenth century Egypt. Shifts in population and consumer demand resulted in significant changes in agricultural and industrial production in the second half of nineteenth century Egypt. Under Khedive Isma`il, the cultivation of sugarcane spread throughout central and southern Egypt, becoming Egypt's secondary cash crop. Until this period, Egyptian sugarcane was exported to Europe for refining. The rapid growth of European populations in Cairo, Alexandria, and the Delta and the consequent increased demand for refined sugar spurred Egyptians industrialists to establish the first refinery at Hawamdiyya, south of Cairo, in 1881. Accompanying these shifts in production was the appearance of bakeries and sweet shops in Egyptian towns and cities that transformed refined sugar into an array of pastries. The forms that these pastries assumed drew from the Ottoman cultural realm as well as the diverse milieu of cultural influences that flooded nineteenth-century Egypt. Italian gelato, French croissants, bread made from refined flour, and an array of cookies and cakes appeared in Egyptian towns and cities. While the inspiration underlying this production drew from a wide geographic range, sweet things acquired new significance and context as Egyptians consumed them. How indeed did refined sugar and its consumption in new forms overlap, coalesce, and conflict with the evolution of Egyptian cultural identity during the colonial periodo Drawing from a rich array of sources including periodicals, memoirs, and newspapers, this paper explores the evolving significance of refined sugar during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In tracing sugar's journey from the refinery to the bakery to the consumer, this paper tackles food as a transitional border that bridged imperial and national culture. It engages consumption as a potent force that did not simply respond to but inspired new modes of production. In parallel fashion this paper questions the seemingly ubiquitous power of cosmopolitanism by critically exploring how Egyptians endowed sugar and sweet things with the taste of the local.