[Sca-cooks] Seeking Improvement

[Decker, Terry D.]

Here's a question to ask said Laurel, "When and how did Europeans come to
use cane sugar?"  Bet that one gets you a real wild answer considering the
line you're being handed.  We'll discuss my answer in a moment.

First, let's take a look at beet sugar by stealing some lines I have stashed
in my notes.

The first person known to have extracted beet sugar is a Prussian chemist,
Andreas Sigismund Marggraf, in 1747.

The commercial process was first presented by Franz Karl Achard, also a
German chemist in 1793.  He went on to set up the first commercial plant in
1802.

The extraction process requires cooking beet pulp into a slurry, straining
the liquid and treating the liquid with quick lime and a few other chemical
agents.  The process is repeated several times until the red color is
removed from the sugar and the crystalline product is obtained.  Since the
sugar beet of 1802 had about 6% sugar content, you would probably see 180
lbs of pulp and a bunch of red colored molasses for every 5 to 6 pounds of
sugar.  Modern sugar beets have as much as 20% sugar content.

I can see using beets and carrots to sweeten dishes in period, as both
contain significant amounts of sugar.  I don't know of any evidence to
support converting them to a more or less refined sugar.  The process of
refining beet sugar is quite a bit more complex than refining cane.

Commercial beet sugar refining is a development of the Napoleonic Wars, when
the English blockade of the Continent required new sources of sugar
unhindered by the blockade be found.

As for date sugar, that's possible, but I have my doubts.  Date sugar
consists of dehydrated, ground dates.  It is commonly substituted on a 1 to
1 basis for granulated sugar, but unlike granulated sugar it will not
dissolve.

Cane sugar probably originates in the Indus Valley and was transported East
into Asia fairly early on.  There are various quibbles about precisely where
it originates, but the best arguments I've seen say India.  The Greeks found
cane being grown and used in 325 BCE when Nearchus led Alexander's army into
Northern India.  This is described in Pliny.

Sugar cane was transplanted to Mesapotamia, probably during the Macedonian
expansion, where sugar refining is believed to have developed before 500 CE.
Some sources place sugar refining as early as 100 BCE and I have no reason
(as yet) to doubt them.  White sugar was being refined by the time of the
Islamic expansion.

The Islamic expansion of the 7th and 8th Centuries brought sugar production
to Egypt, Spain, and the Levant and later to Sicily and Cyprus. While some
Europeans were probably aware of sugar as early as the 8th Century, a larger
number would encounter it in the 11th and 12th Centuries.  The Crusaders
took over a portion of the Levantine sugar production and sugar appears as
one of the taxed imports of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

In 1091, Sicily was taken by the Normans and pased through a succession of
hands until it came under the control of Spain in 1282 after the Scilian
Vespers.  Sugar cane from Sicily was planted in Madeira and the Canary
Islands in the 15th Century.

Cyprus was retaken in 1191 and Cypriot sugar production was controlled by
Europe until the Ottomans took the island in 1571.  Sugar of Cyprus appears
in some period texts and refers to refined cane sugar from Cyprus.

Sugar cane was introduced to the New World from the Canary Islands in 1493.
So, "where and when did Europeans come to use cane sugar?"  How does one not
have sugar available in the 12-14th Centuries, yet magically become major
sugar producers in the 15th Century to the extent that they broke the Arab
monopoly on sugar production.

If you truly wish to be nasty, my suggestion to you is to write a paper on
sugar production and use in the Medieval world and see about presenting it
at a Collegium or Symposium.  Then you become the authority. <REG>

Bonne Chance

Bear



>   GrrrrrrrrrrrrGrrrrrrrrrrGrrrrrrrrrrrrr
>    I greatly dislike when a freakin Laurel
>   REFUSES to hear that they may be wrong and
>    dismisses me as an "unskilled and poorly read apprentice"
>   makes one want to behave badly........and not in a good way
>
>    *DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP Breath*
>
> sorry  :~(        (vent off)
>
>    According to the More skilled and vastily superior Laurel
>     person the only sugar available to the noble households
>    of the 12-14th century were Date and Beet Sugars,my unskilled
>    and poorly read self believe that cane sugar was available
>     to them,mostly as a "medicinal" yet also in food-stuffs
>    preperation.
>   May I ask for suggestons on where to find documentation
>    on Cane sugar,if it was used,and how was used in Medieval cookery.
>
>
>
>       =C6thelw=FClf
>
>   *combing thru what few books I do have*