[Sca-cooks] date and palm sugar

[Johnna Holloway]

Here's the Palm sugar information:

The Encyclopedia of Food and Culture says:

"Palms. Various species of palms have for centuries been tapped— 
notably in southern and southeastern Asia—for their sweet sap, which  
is drunk fresh or fermented. Alternatively, the sap has been boiled  
down until it sets to a solid mass of fudgelike consistency, called  
gur or jaggery, or is distilled to produce arrack. Among palm species  
exploited in these ways are the palmyra (Borassus flabellifer), the  
toddy fishtail or jaggery palm (Caryota urens), the coconut palm  
(Cocos nucifera), the nipa palm (Nipa fruticans), and a wild date palm  
(Phoenix sylvestris) related to the palm of commercial date production  
(P. dactylifera), the fruits of which are also a source of sugar."

OED
jaggery 1. A coarse dark brown sugar made in India by evaporation from  
the sap of various kinds of palm.
1598 HAKLUYT Voy. II. I. 252 Sugar which is made of the nutte called  
Gagara: the tree is called the palmer. 1598 tr. Linschoten's Voy. 102  
Of the aforesaide Sura they likewise make Sugar, which is called Iagra.


sugar palm   Arenga saccharifera (syn. A. pinnata); grows wild in  
Malaysia and Indonesia; sugar (sucrose) is obtained from the sap.  
Various other palms are also tapped for sugar, or to make palm wine,  
including mokola palm (Hyphaene petersiana), lala palm (H. coriacea),  
palmyra or Borassus palm (Borassus flabellifer), nipa palm (Nypa  
fruticans), wild date palms (Phoenix sylvestris and P. reclinata),  
buri palm (Corypha utan or C. elata), and fishtail or toddy palm  
(Caryota urens).

from  "sugar palm"  A Dictionary of Food and Nutrition. Ed. David A.  
Bender. Oxford University Press 2009.

Think of it as the equivalent of taping maple trees.

One of the problems with tracing this consumption and use is we have  
limited historical recipes for Southeast Asia.
---

Dates and date sugar

One important thing to keep in mind is that dates vary in the amount  
of sugar they yield. Some are 80 per cent invert sugar. Some are half  
that amount.

As to what the Elizabethans knew of it, this appears in:

The first booke of the historie of the discouerie and conquest of the  
East Indias, enterprised by the Portingales, in their daungerous  
nauigations, in the time of King Don Iohn, the second of that name   
Set foorth in the Portingale language, by Hernan Lopes de Castaneda.  
And now translated into English, by N.L. Gentleman. 1582

Of the departure of the Captaine Generall from Calycut towarde  
Portingale, and what further happened vnto him being in the Iland  
Ansandina. Cap. 22.

"And they bearing after this sorte, was broken the Rudder of one of  
the same, by reason whereof those that were within the ship were  
forced to go in their boats toward the lande. Nicholas Coello who was  
next to this ship, went immediatly and layde the same aboord, thinking  
indéede to finde in it some greate shore of riches, howbeit there was  
nothing els but Cocos and Melasus, which is a certeine kinde of Sugar  
made of Palmes or Date trées."

Johnnae