Sucrose

“ Chemically, sugar belongs to the class of bodies known as sucrose or saccharose and is a compound in a pure state consisting solely of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, typical of that class of foods of which starch is the most important member, known as carbohydrates. ”

“ It is usually ten days after the sugar has been finally discharged from the ship, as this allows a sufficient period in which to determine the exact weight of the sugar and the percentage of sucrose it contains. An instrument called a polariscope is invariably employed to determine the amount of sucrose present and the results obtained from its use are absolutely accurate. ”

“ How the sugar beet has gained enormously in sugar content under chemical control
Pure white sugar is the first and greatest contribution of chemistry to the world's dietary. It is unique in being a single definite chemical compound, sucrose, C12H22O11. All natural nutriments are more or less complex mixtures. Many of them, like wheat or milk or fruit, contain in various proportions all of the three factors of foods, the fats, the proteids and the carbohydrates, as well as water and the minerals and other ingredients necessary to life. ”

“ The act or process by which cane sugar (sucrose) , under the action of heat and acids or ferments (as diastase) , is broken or split up into grape sugar (dextrose) , and fruit sugar (levulose) ; also, less properly, the process by which starch is converted into grape sugar (dextrose) .
The terms invert and inversion, in this sense, owe their meaning to the fact that the plane of polarization of light, which is rotated to the right by cane sugar, is turned toward the left by levulose.
In*vert" (?) , v. t. [imp. & p. p. Inverted; p. pr. & vb. n. Inverting.] ”

“ Sugar, more or less pure, is very generally found in plants. It is not only the seasoning of most eatable fruits, but abounds in various roots, as the Carrot, Beet and Parsnip, and in many plants of the grass or cane kind besides the famous Sugar Cane, Saccharum officinarum. There is great reason to suppose Sugar not so properly an original secretion, as the result of a chemical change in secretions already formed, either of an acid or mucilaginous nature, or possibly a mixture of both. ”

“ It appears, moreover, that sugar has the property of rendering some of the Earths soluble in water. Sugar in water, at the temperature of 50°, is capable of dissolving one half of its weight of lime; the solution thus produced is of a beautiful white-wine colour, and has the smell of fresh-slacked quick-lime. It is precipitated from the solution by the carbonic, citric, tartaric, sulphuric, and oxalic acids; and it is decomposed, by double affinity, by caustic and carbonated potass and soda, and by the citrate, tartrate, and oxalate of potass, &c. ”

“ Thus in animal digestion, the sugar produced in the stomach is absorbed by the lacteals as fast as it is made, otherwise it ferments, and produces flatulency; so in the germination of barley in the malt-house, so long as the new plant lives, the sugar, I suppose, is absorbed as fast as it is made; but that, which we use in making beer, is the sugar produced by a chemical process after the death of the young plant, or which is made more expeditiously, than the plant can absorb it. ”

“ Sugar and molasses are made from the juice of a cane; maple sugar from the sap of a tree that grows plentifully in all our mountain districts. You think it wonderful that milk can be taken from a tree. Is it not quite as strange to find sugar there? I suppose you will reply to this that the milk is ready prepared, while we have to make the sugar. That is true, but we add nothing to what we take from the tree. We simply apply heat to the sap, and behold the sugar! The chief reason, I think, why we are not surprised at this sugar tree is that we are familiar with it. ”

“ In the first place, I should like to call your attention to a fact with which the whole of you are, to begin with, perfectly acquainted, I mean the fact that any liquid containing sugar, any liquid which is formed by pressing out the succulent parts of the fruits of plants, or a mixture of honey and water, if left to itself for a short time, begins to undergo a peculiar change. ”

“ Succory seed, cools the heat of the blood, extinguishes lust, opens stoppings of the liver and bowels, it allays the heat of the body, and produces a good colour, it strengthens the stomach, liver, and reins. ”

“ The dry Conserve, which is called the Sugar of Roses, is a very good cordial to strengthen the heart and spirits; as also to stay defluctions. The syrup of dried red Roses strengthens a stomach given to casting, cools an over-heated liver, and the blood in agues, comforts the heart, and resists putrefaction and infection, and helps to stay lasks and fluxes. Honey of Roses is much used in gargles and lotions to wash sores, either in the mouth, throat, or other parts, both to cleanse and heal them, and to stay the fluxes of humours falling upon them. ”

“ The colour both of the Rose-leaves and the Syrup about them, will be exceedingly beautiful and red, and the taste excellent, and the whole very tender and smoothing, and easie to digest in the stomack without clogging it, as doth the ordinary rough conserve made of raw Roses beaten with Sugar, which is very rough in the throat. The worst of it is, that if you put not a Paper to lie always close upon the top of the conserve, it will be apt to grow mouldy there on the top ”

“ Of this sugar there are two kinds, viz., the hard or cake sugar, and that of a friable character, which is produced by constantly stirring the thick sirup when it is becoming cool. The taste of the sap or juice, when taken from the tree, is just sweet enough to be noticed; and though we have never ascertained the quantity commonly obtained from a single tree, we have been told that a very fruitful tree, in a good season, may be made to yield five pounds of the best sugar. ”

“ And a syrup made of the juice and sugar, is very effectual to all the purposes aforesaid, and so is the distilled water of the herb and flowers made in due season, especially to be used when the green herb is not in force to be taken. The decoction of the herb and roots outwardly applied, doth wonderfully help all sorts of hard or cold swellings in any part of the body, is effectual for shrunk sinews or veins, and heals green wounds, old sores, and ulcers. ”

“ Saccharina or Sugar-Maple, furnishes to the North Americans an article well known under the name of Sugar, but which is generally obtained from the Sugar Cane or Succhnrum Officinarum of Linnæus. Manna is procured from a species of Ash termed Fraxinus Ornus: and many other vegetable products might be enumerated, were it not that they would form too distended a list for present consideration.
Plants, according to the places of which they are natives, require different degrees of heat. Elasticity is common to vegetables ”

“ The leaves and flowers of the Water Lilies are cold and moist, but the roots and seeds are cold and dry; the leaves do cool all inflammations, both outward and inward heat of agues; and so doth the flowers also, either by the syrup or conserve; the syrup helps much to procure rest, and to settle the brain of frantic persons, by cooling the hot distemperature of the head. The seed as well as the root is effectual to stay fluxes of blood or humours, either of wounds or of the belly; but the roots are most used, and more effectual to cool, bind, and restrain all fluxes in man or woman. ”

“ Then there would be no difficulty in its slipping down the little throat; for you know when anything is thoroughly melted or dissolved, it breaks up into such tiny pieces that the eye cannot see them. When you melt a lump of sugar in a glass of water, the sugar is all there as much as it ever was, although its little grains no longer cling together in one big lump. ”

“ Sugar may be decomposed by a red heat, and, like all other vegetable substances, resolved into carbonic acid and hydrogen. The formation and the decomposition of sugar afford many very interesting particulars, which we shall fully examine, after having gone through the other materials of vegetables. We shall find that there is reason to suppose that sugar is not, like the other materials, secreted from the sap by appropriate organs ”

“ Of the plants which produce the sugar of commerce there may be mentioned the sugar-cane, the sugar-beet, the maple, and palm trees. The principal sources of the sugar of commerce are the sugar-cane and the sugar-beet.
Of the condimental foods may be mentioned spices, including pepper, mustard, cinnamon, allspice, and other foods of this class. Common salt occupies a unique position in food products. It is the only mineral substance which has any value as a condiment in human food. ”

“ If peas or beans have a portion of copper, the label should state that fact. The various natural constituents of a food product need not be noted, for the presence of the usual condimentary substances employed in foods, viz., sugar, salt, spices, vinegar, and wood smoke. The term “sugar” is used in its usual signification, viz., sugar made from sugar cane, sugar beets, maple trees, sorghum etc. When sugars are made by the artificial hydrolysis of starch, by an acid or salt, that fact should be noted on the label by the term “glucose,” or starch sugar. ”

“ Take a pound of sugar, dissolve it in thin fair water, when it is boiled a little while, put in your Cherries after they are stoned, four pound to one pound of Sugar, let them lye in the Sugar three dayes, then take them out of the syrup and lay them on sieves one by one, and set them before the Sun upon stools, turn them every day, else they will mould; when they look of a dark red colour, and are dry then put them up. And so you may do any manner of Fruit. In the Sun is the best drying of them, put into the syrup some juyce of Rasps. ”

“ Boiled with some of the leaves and stalks they form, if sweetened with honey, or barley sugar, an excellent posset drink for the same purpose. In America the root is employed successfully for checking the night sweats of pulmonary consumption, a fluid extract thereof being made for this object, the dose of which is from fifteen to sixty drops in water. ”

“ Many plants fit for use, and perhaps most such, and many others, by means of an easy art, give out a great quantity of excellent sugar, not much inferior to that of sugar-canes. Eight ounces of the fresh juice of the skirret yield an ounce of the best sugar. Margraff Mem. de l’Acad. de Berlin.
[45] Many phænomena prove this plethora; and it is evinced by a simple observation, and one that occurs daily, viz. by those convulsions of the lower jaw-bone which cause a collision of the teeth in sleep, and that more strongly in boys when they have eat a hearty supper. ”

“ The use of pot-herbs is not necessary; however, we may allow the patients to taste of boiled endive, of succory, of plantain, of cabbage twice boiled, and of the autumnal fruits, such as are astringent, spitting out the fleshy parts, and whatever else will irritate the intestines. When the intemperament is very hot, we must give raw succory, and make the patients drink of cold water. The other drink should be rain-water; and, when the stomach is languid, wine may be taken. ”

“ Most plants contain sugar in their roots. But in some large quantities are deposited, as in the sugar beet, which is employed most extensively in France and on the continent of Europe for the supply of sugar for dietetical purposes. A series of specimens illustrating products from beet-root, including sugar, from Messieurs Serret, Hamoir, and Co., of Valenciennes, are exhibited in the Collection. ”

“ SUGAR is the concrete or crystallized juice of the sugar cane (Saccharum officinarum, Fig. 5) , a plant, much cultivated both in the East and West Indies, which has a jointed stem eight or nine feet high, long and flat leaves of greenish yellow colour, and flowers in bunches.
The cultivation of the sugar-cane is pursued to great extent in the islands of the West Indies, where, about {20}three centuries ago, it was first introduced from China, or some other parts of the East, and where it flourishes with great luxuriance, particularly in moist and rich ground. ”

“ There is this farther advantage in keeping the third common term, that it leaves us the words Succus, Jus, Juice, for other liquid products of plants, watery, milky, sugary, or resinous,—often indeed important to man, but often also without either agreeable flavor or nutritious power; and it is therefore to be observed with care that we may use the word 'juice,' of a liquid produced by any part of a plant, but 'nectar,' only of the juices produced in its fruit. ”

“ Sucre de pommes, short crowbar, “jemmy.”
Sucrer (familiar) , to fondle, to spoil one.
Sucrier, m. (familiar) , man suffering from diabetes. Alluding to the quantity of sugar generated by the kidneys.
Malheureusement pour lui, il est diabétique au suprême degré. Ce n’est pas un homme, c’est un sucrier.—A. Sirven.
Suée, f. (popular) , reprimand, or “wigging;” fear, “funk;” —— de monde, large crowd.
Suer (general) , ça m’fait ——, that “riles” me, disgusts me.
Ça m’fait suer, quand j’ai l’onglée,
D’voir des chiens qu’ont un habit!
Quand, par les temps de gelée,
Moi j’n’ai rien, pas même un lit. ”

“ Sugar is held to be hot in the first degree, strengthens the lungs, takes away the roughness of the throat, succours the reins and bladder.
The juice of Citrons cools the blood, strengthens the heart, mitigates the violent heat of fevers.
The juice of Lemons works the same effect, but not so powerfully.
Juice of Liquorice, strengthens the lungs, helps coughs and colds. ”