What Einstein Told His Cook Read Online Free
Author: Robert L. Wolke
can’t get from dozens of other foods. You’d have to eat a truly unhealthful amount of brown sugar to get your daily mineral requirements that way.
Here’s a quick overview of what goes on at the sugar mill, usually located near the cane fields, and the sugar refinery, which may be located some distance away.
Sugar cane grows in tropical regions as tall, bamboo-like stalks about an inch thick and up to ten feet tall, just right for being chopped down with a machete. At the mill, the cut cane is shredded and pressed by machines. The pressed-out juice is clarified by adding lime and allowing the juice to settle, and then boiled down in a partial vacuum (which lowers its boiling temperature) until it thickens into a syrup, colored brown by concentrated impurities. As the water evaporates, the sugar becomes so concentrated that the liquid can’t hold it anymore; the sugar turns into solid crystals. The wet crystals are then spun in a centrifuge, a perforated drum similar to the drum in your washing machine that flings water out of your laundry during the spin cycle. The syrupy liquid—the molasses—is flung out, leaving wet, brown sugar containing an assortment of yeasts, molds, bacteria, soil, fiber, and other miscellaneous plant and insect debris. That’s the real “raw sugar.” The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declares it to be unfit for human consumption.
The raw sugar is then shipped to a refinery, where it is purified by washing, re-dissolving, boiling to re-crystallize it, and centrifuging twice more, making the sugar progressively purer and leaving behind progressively more concentrated molasses, whose dark color and intense flavor are due to all the non-sugar components—sometimes called the “ash”—in the cane juice.
Health-food stores that claim to be selling “raw” or “unrefined” sugar are usually selling turbinado sugar, which is a light brown sugar made by steam-washing, re-crystallizing, and centrifuging raw sugar for the second time. In my book, that’s refining. A similar pale brown, large-grained sugar called demerara sugar is used in Europe as a table sugar. It is made on Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Madagascar, from sugar cane grown in rich, volcanic soil.
Jaggery sugar, made in rural India, is a dark brown, turbinado-like sugar made by boiling down the sap of certain palm trees in an open container, so that it boils at a higher temperature than in the partial vacuum of the usual cane sugar refining method. Because of the higher temperature, it develops a strong, fudge-like flavor. The boiling also breaks down some of the sucrose into glucose and fructose, making it sweeter than plain sucrose. Jaggery sugar is often sold pressed into blocks, as are other brown sugars in many parts of the world.
The unique flavor of molasses has been described as earthy, sweet, and almost smoky. The molasses from the first sugar crystallization is light-colored and mildly flavored; it is often used as a table syrup. Molasses from the second crystallization is darker and more robust, usually used in cooking. The last, darkest, and most concentrated molasses, called blackstrap, has a strong, bitter flavor that is an acquired taste.
A cleaned-up piece of raw sugar cane, by the way, can be a real treat. Many people in cane-growing areas, especially children, like to chew on sticks of sugar cane. They’re very fibrous, but the juice is, of course, delicious.
MY SUGAR IS SO REFINED
Why do people say that refined, white sugar is bad?
T his nonsensical claim is a mystery to me. It seems that some people take the word refined as an indication that we humans have somehow defied a law of Nature by having the audacity to remove some undesirable materials from a food before eating it. White sugar is just raw sugar with those other materials removed.
When sugar is refined by three successive crystallizations, everything but pure sucrose is left behind in the
Here’s a quick overview of what goes on at the sugar mill, usually located near the cane fields, and the sugar refinery, which may be located some distance away.
Sugar cane grows in tropical regions as tall, bamboo-like stalks about an inch thick and up to ten feet tall, just right for being chopped down with a machete. At the mill, the cut cane is shredded and pressed by machines. The pressed-out juice is clarified by adding lime and allowing the juice to settle, and then boiled down in a partial vacuum (which lowers its boiling temperature) until it thickens into a syrup, colored brown by concentrated impurities. As the water evaporates, the sugar becomes so concentrated that the liquid can’t hold it anymore; the sugar turns into solid crystals. The wet crystals are then spun in a centrifuge, a perforated drum similar to the drum in your washing machine that flings water out of your laundry during the spin cycle. The syrupy liquid—the molasses—is flung out, leaving wet, brown sugar containing an assortment of yeasts, molds, bacteria, soil, fiber, and other miscellaneous plant and insect debris. That’s the real “raw sugar.” The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declares it to be unfit for human consumption.
The raw sugar is then shipped to a refinery, where it is purified by washing, re-dissolving, boiling to re-crystallize it, and centrifuging twice more, making the sugar progressively purer and leaving behind progressively more concentrated molasses, whose dark color and intense flavor are due to all the non-sugar components—sometimes called the “ash”—in the cane juice.
Health-food stores that claim to be selling “raw” or “unrefined” sugar are usually selling turbinado sugar, which is a light brown sugar made by steam-washing, re-crystallizing, and centrifuging raw sugar for the second time. In my book, that’s refining. A similar pale brown, large-grained sugar called demerara sugar is used in Europe as a table sugar. It is made on Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Madagascar, from sugar cane grown in rich, volcanic soil.
Jaggery sugar, made in rural India, is a dark brown, turbinado-like sugar made by boiling down the sap of certain palm trees in an open container, so that it boils at a higher temperature than in the partial vacuum of the usual cane sugar refining method. Because of the higher temperature, it develops a strong, fudge-like flavor. The boiling also breaks down some of the sucrose into glucose and fructose, making it sweeter than plain sucrose. Jaggery sugar is often sold pressed into blocks, as are other brown sugars in many parts of the world.
The unique flavor of molasses has been described as earthy, sweet, and almost smoky. The molasses from the first sugar crystallization is light-colored and mildly flavored; it is often used as a table syrup. Molasses from the second crystallization is darker and more robust, usually used in cooking. The last, darkest, and most concentrated molasses, called blackstrap, has a strong, bitter flavor that is an acquired taste.
A cleaned-up piece of raw sugar cane, by the way, can be a real treat. Many people in cane-growing areas, especially children, like to chew on sticks of sugar cane. They’re very fibrous, but the juice is, of course, delicious.
MY SUGAR IS SO REFINED
Why do people say that refined, white sugar is bad?
T his nonsensical claim is a mystery to me. It seems that some people take the word refined as an indication that we humans have somehow defied a law of Nature by having the audacity to remove some undesirable materials from a food before eating it. White sugar is just raw sugar with those other materials removed.
When sugar is refined by three successive crystallizations, everything but pure sucrose is left behind in the
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