[Sca-cooks] Re: Blown Sugar is Chinese Apparently
Johnna Holloway
johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu
Wed Oct 26 17:12:50 PDT 2005
They had sugar--
Sugar, China’s most important sweetener, first appeared during the Tang
Dynasty (617 -907). During the Warring States Period (475 – 221 B.C.),
people in the State of Chu had learned to extract the sweet flavoring
from sugar cane juice. Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty sent an envoy
to the Western Region to learn how to make sugar. After the envoy
returned home, he used sugar cane from Yangzhou to make sugar. Its color
and flavor were superior to that produced in the Western Region, so
granulated sugar came to play a key role in Chinese cooking.
Because sugar is water-soluble, it became an important flavoring used to
make food sweet and delicious. It is used in soup and in cooking all
kinds of dishes. Malt sugar and honey, which were used as sweeteners and
flavorings before the Han Dynasty, now are used mostly to make thick soup.
http://www.china.org.cn/english/imperial/25995.htm
Peter Macinnis in Bittersweet. The Story of Sugar dates the arrival of
cane to 200 BC.
By 286 AD it's being sent as tribute. And Marco Polo mentions it in
China also.
Sanjida O'Connell in Sugar The Grass that Changed the World talks about
sugar in China being a Buddhist
introduction. The author talks about an Indian
Buddhist hermit who had settled at See Tschuan as a hermit. He was
credited with teaching
locals a superior method of extracting sugar from their cane. Later the
Emperor T'ai Tsung sent
an envoy to Behar to learn the art of sugar boiling in circa 640.
By the Song Dynasty, sugar is being made into elaborate edible sweets.
page 15
Johnnae
Elise Fleming wrote:
>Greetings! I've been skimming the digests because I've been substitute
>teaching for two weeks and it's using up what energy I have. However, I
>had a question today about this Chinese business... When was sugar cane
>developed and grown in China? When did they have whatever passed for
>refineries? You can't make blown sugar without having some type of sugar
>production and I will admit that I know virtually nothing about China. I
>know that the Arabic sugar production from cane supposedly started around
>the time of Mohammed. Did the Chinese have "processed" cane sugar prior to
>the Arabs?
>
>Alys Katharine
>
>Elise Fleming
>alysk at ix.netcom.com
>http://home.netcom.com/~alysk/
>
>
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