[Sca-cooks] Re: Blown Sugar is Chinese Apparently

[Johnna Holloway]

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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