[Sca-cooks] Sugar was Clotted Cream

[Susan Fox]

Now I want to try to make strawberry preserves with honey.  Not sure 
about specific proportions, I will probably just cover hulled berries 
with sugar and let them cook until done.

I am just tickled to death with the original article.  I dearly love 
cream tea.

Selene

Micheal wrote:

>   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
>