[Sca-cooks] Sugar grades

Suey lordhunt at gmail.com
Wed Aug 1 16:52:56 PDT 2007


Rehashing Teresa Castro and trying to translate her medieval terms into 
something logical for me. I get more muddled everyday. She says in terms 
of processing from the most raw to the finest :
    1. azucar rojo: I think that is sugar cane juice, milled cane or 
unrefined cane juice resulting from crushing canes. It is the result 
after mashing the stalks within 24 hours of harvesting.
   2. sulaymani, the result after the second boiling. Could that be 
jaggery or turbinado sugar?
    3. fanid is the third boiling which I translate as 'alfenique' in 
Spanish and in English as sugar paste mixed with almond oil but she says 
sugar bars which I think would be sugar loaves or cones.
    4. refined sugar. Simple - granulated white, no?
     With modern sugar techniques I am totally confused as to how we can 
translate medieval sugar grades in this case for me much less the reader! -
    By the way, you talk about  powdered sugar mixed with what was it - 
cornstarch? -. When recipes call for powdered sugar I take granulated 
put it in the food processor and let it spin until the kitchen is dusted 
in sugar powder. Why pay more?
Suey



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