[Sca-cooks] Sugar beets

[Phlip]

Ene bichizh ogsen baina shuu...

> I'll upstage Phlip by pointing out that although sugar was used
> medicinally, the amounts of sugar used before 16th century in Europe
> seem to be significantly less than the modern consumption, but that's
> not difficult to believe...

Why upstage me? My big gripe about modern cooking, is that modern folks, if
they think something doesn't taste good, add sugar and/or salt to it,
instead of balancing the herbs and spices or <horrors> cooking it properly.
If I want salt, I'll eat pretzels. If I want sugar, I'll makje up a batch of
fudhe. If I want a touch of sweetness in my vegetables, I'll cook them, and
balance the flavors so the natural saugars take center stage. What I won't
do is add corn syrup or sweetened condensed milk, under the impression that
I'm not adding sugar.

Sugar is a very complex subject. While most of us think of it as that white
stuff we get in a box or bag, derived from sugar cane or sugar beets, it
actually comes in a bunch of different chemical configurations, with
slightly different characteristics, and is a necessity, in its variants, for
biological function of ANY living thing. Cookery, when done properly, has
the option of encouraging starches to convert to sugars, or vice versa. And
proper cookery helps bring foodstuffs to their gustatory ideal- you ain't
going to do that by slathering the food with any simple chemical, no matter
how much you like the taste of it.

Saint Phlip,
CoD

"When in doubt, heat it up and hit it with a hammer."
 Blacksmith's credo.

 If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is probably not a
cat.

Never a horse that cain't be rode,
And never a rider who cain't be throwed....



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