Date post: | 17-Dec-2015 |
Category: |
Documents |
Upload: | jade-knight |
View: | 225 times |
Download: | 4 times |
Social sweetness
• The “Sweet Life” - the good life
• Sweethearts
• Sweet = character and state of being
• “Sweet” as an experience of something good and desirable
What are main sources of sweetness?
• Honey - bee products
• sugar cane - • refined, molasses
• sugar beet - last century
• High Fructose corn syrup (HFCS)
The rise of sucrose
Sugar is added to fatty foods to create
“Go-Away”
(describes texture of food)
Peanut butter = worst go-awayadd 10% sugar by weight
Food Texture= mouth feel
Sugar increases viscosity- makes, gummy, thicker
Substitute gums for sugar to create mouth feel
How is most sugars consumed?(world over average consump. =
10%)• add to carbohydrates
– millet, rice, other starches• add to bitter beverages
– cold or hot, tea, coffee, chocolate– SWEET TEA
• add to bitter food to make sweet– tomato, peanut, guava
Saccharum officinarum
Sugar cane is a grassdomesticated in New Guinea - 8000 B.C.to Philippines to India by 6000 B.C.Greek and Roman limited useArab traders to Mediterranean by A.D. 700-1100
SUGAR from Luxury to a Necessity
Sugar originally had medicinal usetoo expensive for food
Later is a spice (not sugar and spice)a rare commodity add to meat dishes
Decoration - display by royaltyonly royals could afford = black
teeth
Columbus carried sugarcane on 2nd journey
• to Santo Domingo
• later throughout Caribbean and Brazil
– by 1650 large-scale production
• later to Pacific islands, esp. Hawaii
After Harvest• Crush cane and fiber
– release juice– use animal powered crushers, now mechanical
• Heat liquid to increase evaporation– becomes thicker
• supersaturated = crystals will appear– crystals are brown– uncrystallized liquid = molasses, treacle,
blackstrap (used for alcohol)
• Purify through refining to get white pure sucrose (remove molasses)
Sugar production
Extremely labor intensive
could not have produce on large-scale without importation of slave labor
English, Dutch, French in the Caribbean
= greater sugar production than Spaniards
Environmental consequences –
fuelwood, monocropping
Sugar becomes affordable and necessary
England - sugar production increased
2500% in 150 years
by 1850 most consumers = Europeans
Added to beverages - tea, coffee, chocolate
Tea and Sugar
British tea tradition est. mid-1700s
Tea for working class = quick energy
use > jam, puddings