OCR Text |
Show SUOfR BEETS CANE AND BEET SUGAR. It has often been said that beet sugar is not as sweet as cane sugar, notwithstanding the fact that chemists chem-ists have known that, provided the two sorts of sugar are of equal degrees de-grees of fineness of granulation, and hence -alike as to the case or quickness with which a given quantity will dissolve, dis-solve, there is no difference in sweetness, sweet-ness, for instance, when a spoonful is added to a cup of tea. Another common statement ia tha.t beet sugar can not be used successfully success-fully for canning, jdUy making, and preserving. In earlier times, before .methods of refining had been perfected, perfect-ed, there may have been some warrant war-rant for such a belief, but methods of purifying beet sugar were long ago perfected and such sugar has been used for many years in this country and Europe for all household ' purposes. pur-poses. ' In this connection, tests recently carried on at the California experiment experi-ment station by G. W. Shaw; in which ;. by ct sugar and cane sugar were compared com-pared under factory and domestic conditions con-ditions for preserving, are of interest. The fruits used in the tests, carried out on a commercial scale, were cherries, cher-ries, apricots, plums, peaches and pears. Each of these was preserved in syrup of different strength by the usual methods. In making the syrups used with the fruit some differences in the action of different grades of sugar were (noted. The beet sugar caused the more froth in the making of syrup, but further fur-ther investigation led to the conclusion conclu-sion that this was due to the fact that the granulation of the beet sugar was much finer than that of the cane, therefore causing more air to become entangled during the stirring than in the case of the sugar from came. This was shown by the use of cane sugar of about tue same granulation in another an-other batch of syrup, in which cas the same frothing occurred as with the beet product. This has been noted not-ed in other instances, and canners are wont to count this against the beet sugar, but it is only the result of not comparing sugars of the same granu- Ilation. This differenco in the action Jtf to cliff ferewce' of fcramitatfjrm Va"s the only apparent difference arising during the making of the syrup. This is not an essential difference between these sugars, however, as the character charac-ter of the granujation is entirely dependent de-pendent upon the wish of the manufacturer, manu-facturer, the methods of boiling and granulation being the same in both cases. The sugar ordinarily used by the canners is known as dry coarse, granulated a gradte which is not commonly com-monly made by the beet-sugar manufacturers, manu-facturers, because there has not yet been a demand sufficient to warrant its production, but it could be nvidc by them as readily as the ordinary granulation!. After canning, the fruits were stored in cases in the ordwary way, the cans being opened from time to tim!e to determine whether any change had taken place. Of the 2000 cans which were thus treated only six cans from the beet-sugar lot and seven sev-en from the cane-sugar lot spoiled during the two years, and these were ' evidently due to imperfect scalling of the cans, thus showing the utter lack of foundation for the idea that fruits do not keep well when preserved with beet sugar and that such sugar docs not work well in the cannery. In the household trials 40 per cent syrup was used and the fruits were put up in ordinary glass jar's, 50 jars of both apricots and peaches being , canned. "From these not a single can I spoiled during the two-year period." I The two sorts of sugar gave equally J good results. ! For the jelly-making trials apples and currants were selected, equal quantities of juice and sugar, either beet or cane, being used and the mixture mix-ture boiled until of the right consis- tency to jelly. "The produce in each case was as clear as it is possible for jelly to be, and not the slightest difficulty dif-ficulty was experienced in the mak- ; ing of it." |