The 1918 Fanny Farmer Cookbook

Cane sugar is obtained from sugar cane, beets, and the palm and sugar−maple trees. Sugar

cane is a grass supposed to be native to Southern Asia, but now grown throughout the tropics,

large amount coming from Cuba and Louisiana; it is the commonest of all, and in all cases the

manufacture is essentially the same. The products of manufacture are: molasses, syrup, brown

sugar, loaf, cut, granulated, powdered, and confectioners’ sugar. Brown sugar is cheapest, but

not so pure or sweet as white grades; powdered and confectioners’ sugars are fine grades,

pulverized, and, although seeming less sweet to the taste, are equally pure. Confectioners’

sugar

when applied to the tongue will dissolve at once; powdered sugar is a little granular.

Cane sugar when added to fruits, and allowed to cook for some time, changes to grape

losing one−third of its sweetness; therefore the reason for adding it when fruit is nearly

sugar,

cooked.

Cane sugar is of great preservative value, hence its use in preserving fruits and milk; also, for

the

preparation of syrups.

Three changes take place in the cooking of sugar: first, barley sugar; second, caramel;

carbon.

third,

Grape sugar is found in honey and all sweet fruits. It appears on the outside of dried fruits,

such as raisins, dates, etc., and is only two−thirds as sweet as cane sugar. As a manufactured

product it is obtained from the starch of corn.

Milk sugar is obtained from the milk of mammalia, but unlike cane sugar does not ferment.

Fruit sugar is obtained from sweet fruits, and is sold as diabetin, is sweeter than cane

and is principally used by diabetic patients.

sugar,

GUM, PECTOSE, AND CELLULOSE

These compounds found in food are closely allied to the carbohydrates, but are neither

starchy,

saccharine, nor oily. Gum exists in the juices of almost all plants, coming from the stems,

branches, and fruits. Examples: gum arabic, gum tragacanth, and mucilage. Pectose exists in

the

fleshy pulp of unripe fruit; during the process of ripening it changes to pectin; by cooking,

pectin

is changed to pectosic acid, and by longer cooking to pectic acid. Pectosic acid is jelly−like

when cold; pectic acid is jelly−like when hot or cold. Cellulose constitutes the cell−walls of

Chapter I − FOOD