Candy-Making Revolutionized: Confectionery from Vegetables

by Mary Elizabeth Hall

SUGAR

No discussion of candy or candy-making is complete without a statement concerning sugar—its kinds, value and proper use. Without doubt sugar is one of the most maligned of foods. It does do damage when eaten at the wrong time or to excess. From this fact springs one of the great advantages of vegetable candy; in it the proportion of sugar to the bulk of the confection is so reduced that the normal craving for sweets is satisfied without the consumption of a quantity of sugar that insures disaster.

Experimentation long ago showed that sugar is the quickest source of energy in the whole list of available foods. No other food approximates sugar in the ease in which it can be formed into actual body energy. This fact has long been appreciated by athletes. One case in proof was that of two school boys seventeen and nineteen years of age, who had only two hours a day for two months for practice before rowing races in which both were entered. No change was made in their diet except they were permitted to eat as much sugar as they wished, sometimes as much as one-third of a pound a day. One of them, however, did not begin to eat this excess sugar until the third week of his practicing, when he began to show the signs of over training—loss of weight and no desire for either exercise or study. On the third day after beginning the use of the excess sugar these symptoms disappeared, and he became as vigorous as the other. Before the time for the race both youths were in the best of physical condition and were victorious over their antagonists who did not believe in the use of sugar. Subsequently, observation revealed no bad after effects. Similar instances could be indefinitely repeated.

The fundamental fact—that sugar gives energy and gives it with great rapidity—has been made use of by army officers, particularly German.

It must be remembered, however, that sugar is purely an energy-producing food. It is necessary, then, that there be other foods consumed with it in order to preserve a proper balance. These other foods, be it noted, are present in vegetable candy.

The current idea that sugar is fattening is wholly wrong. It is not sugar that is fattening, but too much sugar. Only when sugar is consumed in a quantity in excess of that which can be taken care of by the human commissary department, is it transformed into fat and stored as reserved material.

The methods of refining sugar have been so perfected within the last few years that it is safe to say that few food substances in commercial use are so near to being chemically pure as granulated sugars of good grade. No less an authority than Blythe says, "Loaf sugar is, as a rule, chemically pure. It is probably, indeed, the purest of all substances in commerce, and a large quantity may be burnt up without obtaining a trace of nitrogen and without leaving any residue. The only sugar that may be impure are the raw sugars."

It is commonly known that sugar may come from any one of numberless sources. Sugar of milk is the first sugar with which members of the human race become acquainted, but one which, of course, is of little account in candy-making. The sugar of fruits is in an easily accessible form and one which is of particular value when combined with cane sugar. Honey as stored by the honey bee formerly was highly prized for food value, but now that it is so often stored by the factory without any activity on the part of the honey bee, and now that cane sugar is so very cheap, it is not so much in demand. For the sugar of candy-making, there are three sources: the sugar cane, sugar beet and the sugar maple. For practical purposes, maple sugar may be left out of the discussion.

Ever since sugar has been made on a commercial scale from beets there has waged a controversy as to the relative merits of beet sugar and cane sugar. As far as the amateur candy-maker is concerned, however, the controversy is not of practical interest, for almost all of the sugar that is sold in small quantities is made from beets. Indeed, it is said that it is practically impossible for the housekeeper to obtain sugar made from cane. Moreover, notwithstanding the popular impression that cane sugar is preferable, scientists insist that in every case the pure cane sugar, or saccharose, can be crystallized out from either cane or beet, and that the sugar is identical in chemical composition, appearance and properties. By no chemical test known to the United States Department of Agriculture can pure crystallized saccharose from these different sources be distinguished. The popular impression to the contrary probably comes from the use of beet sugar that has been imperfectly purified. It is interesting to note that there are over ninety grades of sugar known to commerce. The difference between these grades is often so slight that it is impossible to distinguish without painstaking laboratory analysis. In this book white sugar and confectioner's sugar are used wherever possible because they are the purest kinds. Brown sugar and coffee A., much used in candy-making, are grades which have not been refined to so high a point.

A word should be said concerning glucose. The complaint which has been made in connection with glucose has not been made against the substance itself, but against the way it was used. The amateur candy-maker, however, often has difficulty in obtaining glucose, even though in some processes it is most useful.