[Sca-cooks] sugar and rice in Iberia

[Johnna Holloway]

Sugar cane however is a grass. Bring a few stalks along, plant it
in the nice tropical climate when you arrive and it takes over, provided
it has water. (One of the things they did in the 19th century in Hawaii 
was to move
into massive irrigation projects with long ditches and aqueducts that 
transported
water from the wet slopes down to the drier areas so that the cane 
fields could be
expanded. They also built railroads to transport the raw cane to the 
boiling house
and the sugar to the port for shipment.)
According to Sugar Islands by Dorrance, the raw cane was chewed for 
energy and sustenance
by the native Hawaiians.
Sugar processing is more complicated than leaving the syrup out to 
evaporate.
http://www.sucrose.com/lcane.html hints at its complexity.

Johnnae


Stefan li Rous wrote:
> A little over a week ago Johnnae mentioned:
> <<< snipped the early Polynesians brought sugar cane with them to the
> islands of Hawaii.They did not however process the cane into sugar. So while cane grew
> freely they didn't process it into sugar snipped Just because one has the plant available doesn't mean
> that one processes it into the products we do today.>>>
>
> A good example. But what did they do with the sugar cane? That's a  
> long way to bring it if you aren't using it because it is sweet. Were  
> they just chewing/squeezing out the sugar syrup and using it that  
> way? If you have the syrup doesn't it quickly evaporate giving you  
> something like sugar? It seems like that would be almost hard to miss  
> creating sugar refining, or at least creating useable sugar crystals,  
> even if they aren't very pure.
>
> Stefan
>
>