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[u3xc41yu[1].jpg]When people say too much sugar can kill you, they're right. Molasses, a liquid sugar, is also a deadly liquid. In Boston, in 1919, 2.5 million gallons of hot molasses poured out of a broken tank killing 21 people, injuring hundreds, knocking over a fire station and collapsing the support of an elevated train. In 1932, in Mississippi, 2 million gallons of hot molasses escaped a plant, also killing 21 people as it flowed down the main street.
Molasses: Molasses is a liquid sugar extracted from the juice of the sugar cane or sugar beets. In making refined table sugar, the sugar cane is harvested, mashed and the raw juices are boiled to extract the sugar grains for further processing. The remaining syrup is called first molasses. First molasses is then thinned with water and re-boiled so that more raw sugar can be extracted. The leftover syrup from the second boiling is second molasses, and so on. After three or more boilings, molasses is called blackstrap, which has a bitter taste, and is used primarily for cattle feed and industrial purposes. Molasses is sold in a variety of grades. The highest grade is made from clarified and reduced pure sugarcane juice, before the sugar extraction process begins. The Grandma Molasses Company sells this as their "gold label molasses." Their "green label" is the first molasses described above. Either high grade or first molasses is appropriate for cooking. Molasses from sugar beets has a bitter taste, and is not sold for consumption. Some manufacturers will make sugar and molasses from sugar cane which is picked unripe and then ripened through exposure to sulphur. In that case, molasses will be labeled "sulphured." Although cheaper, try not to buy sulphured molasses - the sulphur taste is especially retained in the syrup. Treacle: Treacle is a British term, a generic word for any syrup made in the process of refining sugar cane and it can range from very light to very dark. However, when used in cooking, treacle has come to mean the equivalent of dark molasses. If a British recipe calls for "treacle," you can comfortably substitute dark molasses. Golden Syrup: In Britain, the lighter syrup which is produced when the sugar cane juice is first boiled is sometimes called light treacle but much more commonly, golden syrup. In the U.S. you can buy "Lyle's Golden Syrup." If you can't find golden syrup, dark corn syrup can be substituted, but to my taste golden syrup has a delicious butterscotch flavor that corn syrup lacks.
The copyright of the article Sugar, Part 2 (Liquid)
in Cooking Basics is owned by Lindsay W. McSweeney. Permission to republish Sugar, Part 2 (Liquid)
in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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