[Sca-cooks] Parsnips

[Terry Decker]

If he's got documentation on that, I want to see it.

To my knowledge, the earliest reference to producing a sweet syrup from 
carrots and red beets is found in Olivier de Serres just at the end of the 
16th Century.  I don't recall parsnips being involved.  Cane sugar was 
better than anything Serres could produce, so his work is essentially a one 
off cooking experiment.

Andreas Sigismund Marggraf performed experiments to produce sugar with white 
beets in 1747, but his work was not commercial in nature.  His student Franz 
Karl Achard began selective breeding of white beets about 35 years later. 
Achard improved the sugar content of the beets to the point commercial sugar 
production was possible.  The first beet sugar plant opened in 1801. 
Commercial beet sugar became viable when Napoleon was cut off from West 
Indian sugar.

There is some possibility that parsnips were used to produce a sweetener in 
the early American colonies when cane sugar was unavailable, but I haven't 
found a verifiable reference.  Other than that, the references I find for 
parsnips being used to produce a sweetener are all modern and make a flat 
statement without supporting reference.  I suspect an initial Victorian 
source copied without consideration of its factual basis.  I'll look a 
little further later.

Bear


-----Original Message----- 

I was at an event yesterday where the discussion was cordial making and the
"teacher" asserted there were period sources for that statement.  It sure
was news to me.  I will get home tonight to do some more research. I hate
typing on my phone.....

Aldyth