Brown sugar was for cookies. The white granulated stuff went on Cheerios, where it piled like a snow drift, and confectioners sugar was for the French toast my dad cut in strips on weekends.
This was the long and short of sugar for me. But not anymore. Because sugar is the foodstuff that, more than any other, reflects resilience, ingenuity, and creativity in humankind. The body demands it. We go to incredible (and horrific) lengths to obtain it. And it comes in more forms than you’d ever think possible.
Sugarcane, the crop responsible for 80% of the world’s sugar, is a perennial grass that grows in tropical and subtropical regions. In colder climes, sugar is derived from sugar beets, taproots with high concentrations of sucrose. And corn, the building block of perhaps the most maligned syrup the world has ever seen. But it can also be produced by tapping trees, from northern maples to equatorial palms.
It’s all just sucrose, but digging into the world of sugar reveals a doctoral program’s worth of biochemistry, human physiology, and global anthropology. Beyond the crops from which we refine it, how we refine that sugar and what we wind up doing with it speaks volumes about who we and our cultures are. If you want to understand the inventiveness and resilience of a cuisine, look to its sweeteners. Here is a beginner’s guide to help you do so.
Source: www.foxnews.com