CHAPTER XXI 



Raw Sugar 



By raw sugar the writer understands a material prepared directly from the 

 plant juice, and without any intermediate process of remelting or refining. 

 Under this definition white plantation sugars of very high purity would be 

 classed as raws, whilst the " softs " or " yellow " sugars of the refinery of 

 very much lower purity would rank as refined. A recent publication of the 

 U.S. Bureau of Commerce however adopts an opposite view, and defines 

 refined sugar as " chemically pure " sucrose ; if the term " chemically pure " 

 be accepted within narrow limits a cane sugar-house specialising in plantation 

 white would become a refinery, and the "softs" and "3'ellows" produced 

 by what is generalh^ accepted as a refinery would be classified as raw sugars. 



In the very early days of sugar manufacture the product was cane juice 

 concentrated nearly to dryness and known in India as " gur," the name being 

 derived from the Sanskrit gul or gud, a ball, and relating to the form in which 

 such sugar appeared on the market. With increased skill there appeared 

 a material in small crystals called sarkara, originally meaning gravel, and a 

 material in larger crystals called khanda, the word denoting a piece. From 

 these terms descend the words sugar and candy. Another Indian term, 

 jaggery (a corruption of sarkara), appears to connote a date-palm raw sugar. 



The ancient Indian market also recognized (and as a folk custom continues 

 to recognize) Cairene or Egyptian sugar {misri) as a superior article, the 

 antithesis being China sugar known as chini. To the white refined sugar 

 originally produced in Persia the name tabaschir was given, originally denoting 

 a white siliceous product found in bamboos. 



In the old New World industry, two main classes of sugars were made, 

 muscovado* and clayed sugar. The former was a crystallized product from 

 which some of the adhering molasses had been removed by drainage ; in 

 the latter a less imperfect separation had been obtained by allowing a sus- 

 pension of clay and water to percolate through the mass. Another term 

 appearing in early days is cassonade, primarily implying a sugar shipped in 

 chests. One form of cassonade was powdered clayed loaf shipped to France 

 in this form so as to avoid a higher customs duty. Elsewhere, the term 

 seems to be applied to an inferior type of raw sugar. 



New processes introduced new expressions and thus arose the terms 

 Vacuum Pan Sugars as opposed to Common Process Sugars, Centrifugals as 

 opposed to sugars dried by drainage, and Concrete Sugars in which no drain- 

 age occurred at all. 



Sugars were once, and to a certain extent still are, classed according to 

 the Dutch Standard. In this scheme, 25 D.S. (as it is abreviated) was a 



♦ The best authorities derive this term from the Spanish, m'noscabo, implying damage and the idea of inferior- 

 ty, and derived from ments, little, and acabar, to finish. Acabar appears in French as achever, whence the transition 

 to mechet and the English mischiei is easily seen. A second derivation may be through the Low Latin museum 

 meaning musk (whence is derived muscatel) and correlating with the pleasant smell and taste of raw sugar ; the 

 Italian term musciatto certainly seems verv far from menoscabo. The derivation sometimes found from mas, more, 

 and acahado, finished, i.e., the process carried bevond the syrup stage, seems fantastic. 



428 



