History of the sugar beet in United States

The beets, like most vegetables, were brought to American by the European immigrants. By 1800 the long-pointed root that was familiar to Europe had developed into the round bulbous root or flat-bottom root vegetable that we are familiar with today.

In 1747, Andreas Marggraf, a Prussian chemist, discovered that the plant contained sugar which possessed identical chemical and physical properties with that of sugar obtained from sugar cane.

The history of beet sugar production in the USA can be traced back to 1838 when two Americans, Edward Church and David Lee Child, who had lived for some time in Paris, built a beet sugar factory at Northampton, Massachusetts. This factory, however, made only 1300 pounds of sugar in its first campaign and it closed down in 1841.

Other attempts in Michigan, Utah, California, Wisconsin, Illinois, Maine, and Delaware also ended in failure.

The beet sugar industry in the United States may be said to date from 1870 with the factory in Alvarado, California. It was built by Dyer, a courageous businessman, can be considered as the founder of the beet sugar industry in America. The factory was built at a cost of $125 000 and with a daily capacity of 50 t of roots. The factory was remodeled in 1879 and essentially rebuilt in 1936.

Until World War I, most sugar beet seed used in the United States came from Europe. The disruption of seed importation from Germany caused by the war led to the establishment of domestic seed production, and by the end of the 1930s, domestic production provided about one-third of the needs of the United States.

The Shakers were among the first commercial seed growers. They sold seeds in “papers” and started a tradition of commercial seed growing and selling. As home gardening became popular and necessary in the early 19th century, seed catalogs and mail order became an economical way to buy seeds.

During the fifty or so years prior to 1934, the beet sugar industry grew from fledgling size to one offering opportunities to the risk-oriented entrepreneur. In the first half of the twentieth century sugar beet growing in the USA expanded steadily. American trade policy was aimed at protecting the small domestic sugar industry and in 1934 the Jones-Costigan Amendment was enacted which taxed imported sugar whilst controlling and limiting domestic production

The new selective herbicides of the 1980s eliminated the need for hand weeding in many crops. With the introduction of mechanical harvesters, first in the USA and then in Europe, the crop no longer had to be harvested by hand.
History of the sugar beet in United States

The origin of sugar: From sugar cane to “sweet salt”

Sugarcane is a large grass of the genus Saccharum, tribe Andropogoneae, family Poaceae. Sugar cane is indigenous to Southeast Asia, in particular New Guinea. Sugar cane was first domesticated between 6000 and 8000 years ago; the stalks at this time were chewed so as to extract the sugar.

The earliest known historical record of sugarcane and sugar is from Indian writings from 3000 to 3400 years ago, but sucrose was practically unknown in Northern Europe until around 1000 AD.

By 800 B.C., sugarcane cultivation had spread across India, Mesopotamia, China, and the Pacific Islands; by 800 A.D., crude methods for extracting and processing cane sugar were in place. Soldiers of Alexander the Great are known to have carried it to Europe from India about 325 BC.

According to Nöel Deerr, author of History of Sugar in 1949, claimed that Nestorian Christian monks at the mouth of the Euphrates river were the first to refine the crude raw product into a form of “white” sugar about 450 AD.

A century birth of Islam established from Arabian Peninsula to Southern Spain, an administrative and culturally allowed the development of the sugar industry technology required to successful production of the novel sugar cane crop. Sugar industry began about the time of the Arabian conquest of Egypt in 640 AD. They spread it across North Africa and into Spain by 750AD, where it was important for many years, with 30 000 ha under cane by 1150 AD.

Between 1096 to 1099 AD sugar was first introduced to Europeans by crusaders returning from the Holy Lands. They called it “sweet salt” and soon traded at prices reserved for other rare spices such as saffron and pepper.

Sugar began to reach Europe in sizeable quantities, both overland and via the Mediterranean. In the mid of 8th century, sugar cane was planted for the first time, sugar made from it, on European soil along Spain’s southern littoral.

It is only since the Caribbean islands and tropical north and south Americas were colonized by Europeans, that sugar became available on the world market in a large enough quantity and at acceptable prices for everyday use.
The origin of sugar: From sugar cane to “sweet salt”  

History of sugar cane

The generic name Saccharum was given to sugar cane By Linnaeus in 1753. When the Arabs introduced sugar cane from India via Persia to the Middle East, the word became Sakkar or Sukkar. Possibly the first mention of ‘sugar’ as a commercial product occurs in95 AD in ‘Periplus Maris Erythraei’ (Guide Book to the Red Sea), where the quote ‘Exported commonly … honey reeds which called sakchar’ made by a merchant.

When the Greeks introduced it from Asia Minor it became known in ancient Greece as Sakchar or Sakcharon.

The first recorded use of sugar came leads is from New Guinea in 8000 BC. The peoples of the South Pacific Islands undertook long sea voyages and among the foods which they carried was sugar cane which was thus spread throughout the Pacific and from there to India and Southeast Asia.

Sugar cane

Cane sugar first achieved dominance on the subcontinent of India more that 2500 years ago, and it was in that country and China that commercial sugar was first produced from sugar cane. At about that time sugar cane was spread to Persia, Egypt and countries on the borders of the Mediterranean sea.

The Indian started processing and boiling cane to crystallize sugar around 300 AD and by 540 AD the Persian had learnt the art of sugar making.

It was not until the early eighteenth century, however, that sugar began to become widely used in Western Europe. Sugar cane was unknown in the New World until Columbus introduced it on his second voyage in 1493.
History of sugar cane

History of maple sugar

The first historic mention of sugar is found in China in the eight century BC, where it is spoken of as a product of India. The Arabs and Egyptians were the pioneers in crystallizing the sugar.

According to Robin Mower, it was as early as the mid-1500s that North American Indians and early European forest travelers drank the clear, barley sweet liquid; of both the sugar maple and the black ample as a source of nutrition.

Article published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for 1684-1685, where it is stated that the Indians have practiced this art of making maple sugar longer than any now living among them can remember.

The American Indians had a name for it Sinzibuckwud – the Algonquin word for maple sugar, meaning literally ‘drawn from wood’.

Tapping sugar maples was a fairly common practice in the Great Smoky Mountain. Native Americans used maple sugar sap and sugar to season meats and grain and to make candy and beverages. The Chippewa of the Great Lakes region seasoned fish heads with maple sugar and fed them to their babies; the Mohican mixed maple sugar with meal of dried corn for a snack or trail food.

The traditional of pouring maple syrup over popcorn to form balls was the origin of an American invention, Cracker Jacks, first marketed in 1893.

Although the earliest sellers called ‘Indian melasses’ and ‘Indian sugar’ there have been proponents of the notion that the natives of North America did not tap the trees or make maple sugar until the European came and taught them how.

During the 1800s and early 1900s, many mountain farm families maintained areas in the first called ‘sugar camps’ or sugar bushes for the production of syrup and sugar.

In the early 1900s, sugaring in the United States ceased to be family operations. Instead, the sugaring operation became industrial process.
History of maple sugar

History of toffee

Toffee is chewy candy made of brown sugar, molasses, or syrup that is boiled until very thick and pulled until it is glossy and holds it shape.

The origin of the word ‘toffee’ seems to be lost in time although it might de described from ‘taffy’, a dialect word for ‘sticky’.

The word taffy dates to 1817 and preceded toffee which dates to 1825. Until comparatively recently, the term ‘toffee’ was used simply for the substance made by boiling sugar and butter together; not until the 1930s do examples begin to appear of its use for a single as in ‘a pound of toffees’.

Toffee apples, apples coated with a thin layer of toffee and fixed on a stick, seem to be an early twentieth century invention; they are first mentioned in the Christmas 1917 issue of the B.E.F Times.

In America they are called candy apple. English toffee is a very butter form of toffee to which almonds are often added.
History of toffee

Carbohydrate in history

The initial history of carbohydrates is the story of sugar cane and the human passion for sweetness.

Sugar cane’s origin is thought to be Papua New Guinea, cultivated from wild plants about 10000 years ago during Neolithic agricultural revolution.

Crystalline sugar from cane was known in India around 300 CE and the use of sugar spread via the caravan routes over North Africa into Spain around this time.

 Joseph Louis Proust, who formulated the law of definite proportions, had studied the sugar juices of plants from 1799 to 1808 and had identified three different sugars: sucrose, fructose and glucose.

 In 1792, a carbohydrate was isolated from honey which was different from cane sugar. In 1802, a sweet carbohydrate was found in grapes which were also different from sucrose.

 In 1820, it was found that the same crystalline sugar could be obtained from the urine of diabetics and from the acid hydrolysis of cellulose.

 The name glucose was coined by Dumas in 1838 for the sugar obtained from honey, grapes, starch and cellulose; 20 years later its molecular formula of C6H12O6 was established.

 The name carbohydrate was first proposed in 1844 by German chemist, Carl Schmidt. Chemically this is logical, since as the name implies, carbohydrates are compounds of carbon and hydrogen, together with oxygen.

 In 1856, Liver glycogen, the animal storage form of carbohydrate, was discovered by French physiologist Claude Bernard.
Carbohydrate in history

History of sugar production

Sugarcane was first domesticated in Papua New Guinea, from here is cultivation spread throughout the Pacific and to India, where the first crude forms of sugar was produced around 2000 years ago.

The earliest references to sugar making appear in Sanskrit literature of the fourth century BC, but sucrose was practically unknown in Northern Europe until around 1000 AD.

It was only several century later that sugar began to reach Europe in sizeable quantities, both overland and via the Mediterranean. In the mid of 8th century, sugar cane was planted for the first time, sugar made from it, on European soil along Spain’s southern littoral.

A century birth of Islam established from Arabian peninsula to Southern Spain, an administrative and culturally allowed the development of the technology required to successful production of the novel sugar cane crop.

Sugar production in the early Islamic world harnessed both water and wind power to drive the crushing mills.

These technologies , as well as the practice of refining, were transferred to the Americas via the Atlantic islands.

With the development of the African slave trade in the mid 1400s the processing and ready accessibility of sugar became quickly established.

Until the mid nineteenth century sugar remained an extremely expensive luxury good in Europe, more properly thought of a spice than a food per se.

The first attempt at applying power to sugar production was made by John Stewart in 1768 in Jamaica. The first steam engine reported in Cuba was at the Ingenio Seibabo of the Conde de Mopox y Jaruco in 1769.

Although these steam engines made use of the crushed canes as fuel. They often depend on coal and other non-renewable resources, on contrast to the renewable of animal, wind and waterpower of earlier centuries.

The introduction of vacuum heating technology later revolutionized the boiling process and the introduction of the centrifugal machine likewise revolutionized the curing processed.

History of sugar production

The Sugar Story

The Sugar Story
Sugarcane cultivation and sugar refining were practiced in India, Arabia and the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages, apparently spread from a point of origin in northeastern India though the Muslim world.

By the time of the discovery of the Americas in the late 15th century, sugarcane cultivation had already spread to the Canary Islands.

Columbus and other early explorers of the Caribbean recognized that the climate weather was ideal for sugarcane cultivation and Columbus brought the first sugarcane from the Canary Islands to Santo Domingo in 1493.

The first sugar mill in the Western Hemisphere was built there in 1509, and by 1511, sugarcane was being harvested in Cuba. It spread rapidly to the other islands and to Mexico and Brazil.

The estates granted to Hernan Cortes in Mexico after his conquest there in 1524 were largely devoted to sugarcane production.

The Africa slaves trade stimulated a need for products that the European could barter for slaves in Africa which included distilled spirits.

Rum could be made from molasses, one of the by products of the sugar refining process.

The sugar and rums became essential parts of the triangular trades that brought millions of Africans to the New World over the 300 years from about 1520 to about 1820. Since reducing the sugarcane to raw sugar and molasses required a heating process the island regions were soon denuded of firewood.

Planters would crush the sugarcane to separate the fibers in heavy roller mills usually powered by draft animals or slaves.

The crush cane would be rinsed repeatedly with water to extract the sugar juices. After the exhaustion of firewood, planters used the fibrous remains of the canes, called bagasse, as fuel for the crude boiling pits to crystallize the raw sugar.

By the 1600s, the refining process had been separated from the plantations. Raw sugar was shipped to refineries in Lisbon Marseilles, London and Amsterdam and later to New York and other cities in colonies North America.

The history traced that the industrialization to Europe and the northern American colonies to the place in the sugar induced triangular trade and the reduction of the Caribbean region to a plantation economy based on cheap labor to the same factor.

When France became isolated from its sugarcane colonies following the French revolution, the loss of Haiti (the French part of the island of Santo Domingo) to a slave-led revolution led the French to begin sugar beet production.

The process of refining sugar from beets had been develop in about 1750 by German chemist Andreas Margraf.

A small sugarcane plantation economy developed in Louisiana Territory between 1750 and 1800 and remained in place after the purchase of that territory by the United States in 1803.
The Sugar Story

History of Sugar

Food History
Sugarcane is originated from New Guinea. It cultivated spread along human migration routes to Southeast Asia, India and Polynesia. Arabs brought sugarcane to Spain, during Middle Ages. Sugarcane only began at United Sates in the mid of the 18th century .

Sugar as a commodity in its own right can be traced back several thousand years in China and India. In 510 B.C. when soldiers of the Persian Emperor Darius saw sugar cane growing on the banks of the River Indus, they called it the reeds which produce honey without bees. Later it was grown in Persia and the Arabs took it to Egypt. The word sugar is itself derived from an Arabic word.

Alexander the Great (356-232 B.C.) introduced sugar to the Mediterranean countries, from whence it spread down the east coast of Africa. By 600 A.D. the practice of breaking up the sugar cane and boiling it to produce sugar crystals was widespread.

Then, Marco Polo visited China, he saw flourishing sugar mills. By the middle of the fifteenth century there were plantations in Madeira, the Canary Islands and St. Thomas, and they supplied Europe with sugar until the sixteenth century, when manufacture spread over the greater part of tropical America, followed in the next century by the development of sugar exports from the West Indies. Old records show that raw cane sugar was being refined in Dublin and Belfast in the middle of the seventeenth century.
Food History