Confectionery had a unique status in the food systems of the early modern period. Essentially made of sugar and fruit, sweets were regarded as foodstuff of low nutritional value and with medicinal virtues. A number of confections were first prescribed for certain ailments and their consumption rapidly extended beyond their medical use thanks to their intense sweet flavour. Due to the overlapping uses of confectionery as food and medicine, recipes for confectionery used to be part of cookbooks as well as pharmacopoeia in early modern Spain. This article examines the disputes between pharmacists and confectioners over the right to sell sweets, revealing the complexities of classification and distinction between medicinal confections and sweet treats in seventeenth-century Barcelona