Castor sugar

“ The methods of refining sugar have been so perfected within the last few years that it is safe to say that few food substances in commercial use are so near to being chemically pure as granulated sugars of good grade. No less an authority than Blythe says, "Loaf sugar is, as a rule, chemically pure. It is probably, indeed, the purest of all substances in commerce, and a large quantity may be burnt up without obtaining a trace of nitrogen and without leaving any residue. The only sugar that may be impure are the raw sugars." ”

“ Fruit for use in pies or salads or as stewed fruit can be put up or canned without the use of any sugar at all, according to the canning specialists of the department. They, therefore, advise those who, because of the high price of sugar, have been thinking of reducing the amount of fruit they put up to can as much of their surplus as possible by the use of boiling water when sugar sirup is beyond their means. Any fruit, they say, may be successfully sterilized and retained in the pack by simply adding boiling water instead of the hot sirup. ”

“ The clarification of the juice forms one of the most important operations in sugar manufacture, since the higher the purity of the juice to be concentrated, the greater the percentage of sucrose that will crystallize, and the easier it will be to make a marketable sugar. If a high-grade sugar, or even yellow clarified sugar is to be made, this work should receive still greater attention. ”

“ In refinery work, what is to be feared more than anything is the house becoming “sour.” Raw sugars and sugar liquors, and particularly the sweet waters, have a tendency to ferment, and fermentation, like fire, if not checked and brought under control before it gains much headway, soon pervades the entire establishment, affecting all the liquors and syrups, thus turning the sucrose or sugar into glucose, which cannot be recrystallized. ”

“ The glucose, being colorless and of a thick body, forms an ideal base as far as physical properties are concerned, for a table sirup. The quantity used varies very largely, but in general the glucose constitutes by far the larger percentage of the mixed product. Since glucose has only a very slightly sweet taste and is devoid of the general palatable properties which make a sirup attractive, it is colored and flavored with the product of the sugar cane or the maple tree. Sorghum sirup is also used very extensively in mixing. The process of mixing is an extremely simple one. ”

“ Many of the impurities which have been imputed to glucose, really belong to the cane-sirups with which they have been mixed. These largely adulterated glucoses should always be looked upon with suspicion. The cane-sirups, which are used for this purpose, yield from three to five per cent. of ash, while the ash from a genuine glucose is so little as to be almost unweighable.
There is no reason to believe that a glucose or grape-sugar properly manufactured is any less wholesome than cane or maple-sugar. ”

“ The sugar of milk is not found anywhere else. It is a carbohydrate like cane and grape sugar—that is to say, the hydrogen and oxygen they contain are in the same relative proportions as in water. Milk sugar is not so soluble or so sweet as the other sugars. It does not ferment with ordinary yeast, but certain special yeasts which are made use of in the preparation of keffir, koumiss, etc., have the power of transforming it into alcohol. Its most remarkable property, however, is the facility with which, under the influence of certain bacteria, it is changed into lactic acid. ”

“ Inorganic matter is determined by incineration, farina by the iodine test, water by drying at 210 deg., and molasses by getting rid of it by re-crystalization from alcohol, as also by the color and moisture of the article.
The natural impurities of sugar are gum and tannin; gum is detected by giving a white precipitate with diacetate of lead, and [Pg 137] tannin by giving a black coloration or precipitate with persulphate of iron.
An experienced sugar dealer easily judges of the value of sugar by the taste, smell, specific gravity, moisture and general appearance. ”

“ In [106] the United States thirty-two factories are engaged in the manufacture of glucose, which consume about 40,000 bushels of corn daily, their annual production having an estimated value of 10 millions of dollars. In commerce, the term grape sugar is applied to the solid product, the syrup or liquid form being known as glucose. The chief uses of starch sugar and glucose are in the manufacture of table syrups, and as a substitute for malt in the brewing of beer and ale. ”

“ Sugars and starches are usually associated in nature with another variety of carbohydrates known as cellulose, and this cellulose itself, when acted upon by an acid, is converted very largely into sugars, which, on fermentation, yield alcohol. For industrial purposes, the alcohol produced in this manner is just as valuable as that made from sugar and starch. Whether the diastatic method of converting the starch and sugar into fermentable sugars be used, or the acid method, is simply a question of economy and yield. ”

“ Glucose sugars melt at one hundred and five degrees, 19C., while cane sugars melt only when heated to one hundred and thirty-seven degrees, C. Raw sugars are no longer used. They should be refined to free them from the repulsive sugar mite and other impurities. The best sugar is always the most economical.
The Best Grades of Family Sugar are the cut loaf, cubes and crushed. ”

“ However this may be, there can be no doubt that the constituent elements of fully 98 per cent. of the sugar which has vanished during fermentation have simply undergone rearrangement; like the soldiers of a brigade, who at the word of command divide themselves into the independent regiments to which they belong. The brigade is sugar, the regiments are carbonic acid, succinic acid, alcohol, and glycerine.
From the time of Fabroni, onward, it has been admitted that the agent by which this surprising rearrangement of the particles of the sugar is effected is the yeast. ”

“ If instead of at once saturating the diluted acid with chalk, we boil it for four or five hours, the dextrin is entirely converted into grape sugar (glucose) , which, by the addition of chalk and filtration, as before, and evaporation at a gentle heat to the consistence of a syrup, will, after repose for a few days, furnish a concrete mass of crystallised sugar. Cotton, linen, or unsized paper, thus treated, yield fully their own weight of gum and one-sixth of their weight of grape sugar. ”

“ In many samples of sugars they swarm to that extent that the mass moves with them; and in almost every case, by dissolving a spoonful in a wine-glass of water, dozens of them can be detected by the naked eye, either floating upon the liquid or adhering to the edge of the glass. Those who are in the habit of “handling” sugars, as it is termed, are liable to a skin affection called the grocer’s itch, which is believed to be occasioned by these living inhabitants of our sugar-basins. ”

“ They are not infrequently infested by a small insect, the sugar-mite, many thousands of which have been detected in a single pound of brown sugar." Cane-sugar and grape-sugar, otherwise known as sucrose and glucose, are obtained from various sources. Most of the cane-sugar consumed in England is actually produced from the sugar-cane, but of beet-root sugar there is much in the market, and in America sugar is produced from the maple, from maize, and from the "sugar grass." ”

“ Ten percent of molasses of this kind added to a glucose will make a mixture which is attractive and salable, and, it may also be added, palatable. The other products which are used for mixing with the glucose in the manufacture of table sirup consist of the molasses obtained from cane sugar factories or the sirups made directly from the sugar cane and sorghum. All these bodies have valuable mixing properties and small quantities of them give sufficient color and flavor to the mixed product. ”

“ The product is the commercial glucose or corn syrup, which may if desired be evaporated to a white powder. It is a mixture of three derivatives of starch in about this proportion:
There are also present three- or four-tenths of one per cent. salt and as much of the corn protein and a variable amount of water. It will be noticed that the glucose (dextrose) , which gives name to the whole, is the least of the three ingredients.
Maltose, or malt sugar, has the same composition as cane sugar (C12H22O11) , but is not nearly so sweet. Dextrin, or starch paste, is not sweet at all. ”

“ It is believed by many that all powdered sugar is adulterated with chalk, starch, white corn meal or similar substances. Such is not the case, and it is safe to assume that no mixing whatever is done by any refiner in America. Powdered sugar has a strong tendency to cake or become hard, and some manufacturers who buy coarse granulated sugar from the refiners for grinding purposes use starch to the extent of from two to three per cent. ”

“ It is found naturally in many fruits, and is here called grape sugar. It is the normal sugar of human blood, and in this connection, is usually called dextrose. Glucose is made commercially by boiling starch, most frequently cornstarch, in water, to which sulphuric acid has been added up to one to one and one half per cent. After sufficient boiling, the acid is neutralized with lime, and the sugar separated by chemical methods. If the process is carried out carefully, and reasonably pure reagents are used in the process, the result will be a sirup of fair purity and one of value as a food. ”

“ Salicylic acid, benzoic acid, and saccharin are used to preserve fruits. The last is also added as a sweetener instead of sugar. Many fruit products lose their color with age, and to give them a lasting color they are treated with a coal-tar dye, cochineal, acid magenta, or caramel.
A very small per cent of the jams and jellies sold are strictly pure. These cheap products are made up principally of apple juice and commercial glucose; artificial essences are added to imitate the real flavor. ”

“ Saturated syrup kept in a vessel that is frequently uncorked or exposed to the air soon loses sufficient water, by evaporation from its surface, to cause the formation of minute crystals of sugar, which, falling to the bottom of the vessel, continue to increase in size at the expense of the sugar in the solution. We have seen a single 6-gallon stone bottle, in which syrup has been kept for some time, the inside of which, when broken, has been found to be entirely cased with sugar candy, amounting in weight to 16 or 18 lbs. ”

“ Raw sugar is refined by redissolving it in water, adding to the solution albumen, under the form of serum of blood or white of egg, and, sometimes, a little lime-water, and heating the whole to the boiling-point; the impurities are then removed by careful skimming, and the syrup is decoloured by filtration through recently burnt animal charcoal; the clear decolorised syrup is next evaporated to the crystallising-point in vacuo, and at once transferred into conical earthern moulds, where it solidifies, after some time, to a confusedly crystallised mass ”

“ These juices, together with those of the pear, the peach, the plum, and other such fruits, if taken without adding cane sugar, diminish acidity in the stomach rather than provoke it: they become converted chemically into alkaline carbonates, which correct sour fermentation. It is said in Devonshire that apples shrump up if picked when the moon is on the wane. From the bark of the stem and root of the apple, pear and plum trees, a glucoside is to be obtained in small crystals, which possesses the peculiar property of producing artificial diabetes in animals to whom it is given. ”

“ Invert sugar is so called because the mixture of glucose and fructose which forms the “invert” is laevo-rotatory, whereas cane sugar is dextro-rotatory to the plane of polarized light. The preparation of invert sugar by the acid process consists in treating the cane sugar in solution with a little mineral acid, removing the excess of the latter by means of chalk, and concentrating to a thick syrup. ”

“ When an alkaline solution of grape sugar is boiled with the salts of copper, silver, or mercury, it reduces them; it produces right-handed rotation of a ray of polarised light; by boiling with dilute acid it is converted into galactose (C6H12O6) ; treated with nitric acid it yields mucic acid, with small quantities of saccharic, oxalic, and tartaric acid. Milk sugar is unsusceptible of the vinous fermentation, except under the action of dilute acids, which convert it into grape sugar; in solution, it is converted into lactic or butyric acid by the action of caseine and albuminous matter. ”

“ Our excise authorities prohibit the entrance of glucose into a brewer’s premises in the liquid state. In the brewing of pale sparkling ales grape is esteemed more than either cane sugar or malt, and is said to yield a more sound and wholesome liquor, and one free from the acidity, impurity, and treacly sweetness frequently found in beers brewed from raw or inferior sugars. Glucose may also be obtained from cellulose, but the process is too expensive to admit of being practically worked. ”