Sugar candy is chiefly used as a sweetmeat; and, being longer in dissolving than sugar, in coughs, to keep the throat moist; reduced to powder, it is also blown into the eye, as a mild escharotic in films or dimness of that organ.
SUGAR OF LEAD. Acetate of lead.
SUGAR PLUMS. Syn. Bon-bons, Dragées, Fr. These are made by various methods, among which are those noticed under Drops (Confectionery), Lozenges, and Pastils, to which may be added the following:—Take a quantity of sugar syrup, in the proportion to their size, in that state called a ‘blow’ (which may be known by dipping the skimmer into the sugar, shaking it, and blowing through the holes, when parts of light may be seen), and add a drop or two of any esteemed flavouring essence. If the ‘bon-bons’ are preferred white, when the sugar has cooled a little, stir it round the pan till it grains and shines on the surface. When all is ready, pour it through a funnel into little clean, bright, leaden moulds, which must be of various shapes, and be previously slightly moistened with oil of sweet almonds; it will then take a proper form and harden. As soon as the plums are cold, take them from the moulds; dry them for two or three days in the air, and put them upon paper. If the bon-bons are required to be coloured, add the colour just as the sugar is ready to be taken off the fire.
Crystallised bon-bons are prepared by dusting them with powdered double-refined lump sugar before drying them.
Liqueur bon-bons, now so beautifully got up by the Parisian confectioners, are obtained by pressing pieces of polished bone or metal into finely powdered sugar, filling the hollow spaces so formed with saturated solutions of sugar in
the respective liqueurs, and then spreading over the whole an ample layer of powdered sugar. In the course of three or four days the bon-bons may be removed, and tinted by the artist at will. Instead of white powdered sugar ordered above, coloured sugar may be used. These bon-bons are found to be hollow spheres, containing a small quantity of the spirit or liqueur employed, and will bear keeping for many months. See Sweetmeats, &c.
SUGARS (Medicated). Syn. Saccharides; Sacchara medicata, L.; Saccharolés, Saccharures, Fr. Some of these are prepared by moistening white sugar with the medicinal substance, then gently drying it, and rubbing it to powder; in other cases they are obtained in the manner noticed under Pulverulent Extracts, or Oleosaccharum. The most valuable preparation of this class in British pharmacy is the saccharated carbonate of iron (FERRI CARBONAS CUM SACCHARO—Ph. L.).
SUINT, Gas from. By this is understood a gas prepared from the fatty materials present in the soap-suds used in washing raw wool and spun yarns. The water containing the suint and soap-suds is run into cisterns, and is there mixed with milk of lime, and left to stand for twelve hours. A thin precipitate is formed, which, after the supernatant clear liquor has been run off, is put upon coarse canvas for the purpose of draining off any impurities, sand, hair, &c., while the mass which runs through the filter is put into a tank, in which it forms, after six or eight days, a pasty mass, which, having been dug out and moulded into bricks, is dried in open air. At Rheims the first wash-water of the wool is used for making both gas and potash, because the water contains no soap and only suintate of potash. Havrez, at Verviers, has recently proposed to employ suint—which, by-the-bye, is very rich in nitrogen—for the purpose of making ferrocyanide of potassium.
The dried brick-shaped lumps are submitted to distillation, yielding a gas which does not require purification, and which possesses an illuminating power three times that of good coal gas. The wash-water of a wool-spinning mill with 20,000 spindles yields daily, when treated as described, about 500 kilos of dried suinter, as the substance is technically called. One kilo of this substance yields 210 litres of gas. Annually about 150,000 kilos of suinter are obtained, and this quantity will yield 31,500,000 litres = 1,112,485 cubic feet of gas. Every burner consuming 35 litres of gas per hour, and taking the time of burning at 1200 hours, the quantity of gas will suffice for 750 burners, and as a spinning mill of 20,000 spindles only requires 500 burners, there is an excess of gas supply available for 250 other burners, or the owner may dispose of 5000 kilos of suinter, which is valued at Augsburgh
at about 3s. per 50 kilos, and at about 4s. at Mulhouse.[210]