[Sca-cooks] Sugar was Clotted Cream

[Micheal]

   Just things arising from Stefan`s comment,
" And how would they have been preserved?
Honey? That's too early for sugar and other info tends to point to
quince as the first fruit preserves."
 Surprised you can say

    Cealian

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 04, 2006 2:32 PM
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Sugar was Clotted Cream


>
>
>> If sugar is only from cane or beet then what were they making candy out 
>> of in different civilizations?
>
> Honey has been used as a sweetner since the Paleolithic.  There is a cave 
> painting showing honey gathering.
>
> Sugar cane has been around almost as long, but was only introduced to 
> Europeans around 325 BCE (reference Pliny) when Alexander's armies moved 
> into Northern India.  Sugar cane moved north into Mesopotamia and was 
> brought into the Mediterranean basin by the Islamic expansion in the 8th 
> and 9th Centuries.  Sugar refining may have occurred as early as 500 BCE 
> and refining to white sugar was practiced by 500 CE.
>
> Originally used as a medicine in Antiquity, after the introduction of cane 
> to the Mediterranean it was used as a spice and a culinary ingredient for 
> most of the Middle Ages.  Production and use increased in the late 15th 
> Century leading to an explosion of use in the 16th Century and massive 
> investment in cane plantations in the Caribbean in the 17th Century.
>
> Beet sugar is strictly a modern innovation.  In 1747, Andreas Sigismund 
> Marggraf determined that beets and carrots contained small amounts of 
> sugar and he developed the initial extraction process.  In 1793, Franz 
> Carl Achard introduces a commercial extraction process.  Around 1810, 
> Napoleonic France started the first serious production of beet sugar after 
> the Royal Navy began blockading French ports.  Beet sugar production 
> collapsed after the Napoleonic Wars.
>
> A high sugar variant of the Silesian white beet developed in the 19th 
> Century and rising sugar prices made beet sugar production profitable.
>
>> When using  honey to make candy is not one of the steps crystallization? 
>> What would that be called ?
>> Cealian
>
> You need the candy makers to anwser this one.
>
> Bear
>
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