Sugar was bought in to Scotland in the 1600s before this it would have been mainly honey used to sweeten foods and would have been used sparingly.
Our local climate would have made honey production as unpredictable as it is nowadays
[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0289.1961.tb00049.x
The Early Scottish Sugar Houses, 1660 - 1720 T. C. SMOUT]
The Industries of Scotland Sugar-Refining
The first British settlement in the West Indies was Barbadoes, which was taken possession of in 1627. Twenty years afterwards sugar began to be exported from the island, and that was the first sugar produced in British possessions, the supply previously being obtained chiefly from the Portuguese settlements in Brazil. The British planters in Barbadoes, after becoming thoroughly acquainted with the modes of cultivating and extracting the sugar, did a large trade, and thereby accumulated much wealth. In 1676 they employed in their sugar trade a fleet of four hundred vessels. The first mention of sugar being imported into England is found in Marin's "History of the Commerce of Venice," which refers to a shipment at Venice for England in the year 1319 of about forty tons of sugar and four tons of sugar-candy. In those early days honey was the principal ingredient used in sweetening liquors and dishes; and for many years after sugar had been introduced, it was used only in the houses of the wealthy. Not till the latter part of the seventeenth century, when coffee and tea began to be consumed, did sugar come into general use.
Sugar in Scotland
Sugar and the Colonies
https://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/13081081.scotland-bitter-history-sugar-industry/
Scotland and sugar has an even more difficult history from as early as the 17th century sugar-boiling houses in Glasgow, the making of rum and of course the rush into slavery, particularly after the 1707 treaty. Sugar was king in Glasgow for many years and Professor Tom Devine tells us that "by 1790 the sugar islands become the Clyde's premier overseas centre of trade".
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