64 SWEETENED CoNDENSED MiLK—AppItTIon oF SUGAR 
from the soil to the finished sugar. It is possible, however, that 
the standard of refinement of American beet sugar, during the 
earlier days of its manufacture, was low and that some of the 
beet sugar on the market may have contained small amounts of 
acid, invert sugar and other impurities, ingredients of such a 
nature as to render the sugar prone to give rise to fermentation 
and, therefore, condemn its use in the milk condensery. 
While the beet sugar on the market today appears to have 
reached a very high state of refinement and is, according to the 
best authorities, equal in purity to cane sugar, it is still shunned 
by the American condenseries, which insist that nothing but 
cane sugar will do. However, whenever a shortage occurs of the 
sugar cane crop in the West Indies, raw European beet sugar is 
imported into the United States and it all emerges from our sea- 
board refineries as ‘“‘pure cane sugar.” It is not improbable, there- 
fore, that the sugar supply of many American condenseries today 
consists at times largely of beet sugar, though it is purchased 
under the name of cane sugar. 
There is no good reason why the best refined beet sugar, 
manufactured today in this country and elsewhere, should not 
give fully as good results for condensing purposes as the same 
quality of cane sugar. Tests made at the California Agricultural 
Experiment Station’ led to the conclusion that the two kinds 
of sugar, cane sugar and beet sugar. were equally valuable for 
canning and identical in their behavior when of the same fineness 
of crystallization. 
Beet Sugar Cannot be Detected from Cane Sugar.—\Vhile 
the raw sugar from the two different sources, the sugar cane 
and the sugar beet, takes on the character of the impurities from 
which it has not yet been freed (the raw product of the sugar 
cane is pleasant in flavor, the raw product from the sugar beet 
is acrid and disagreeable in flavor), the sucrose or so-called pure 
cane sugar, can be and is crystallized out, and in every case the 
sugar is identical in chemical composition, appearance and prop- 
“ec 
erties. By no chemical test can the pure crystallized sugar 
from these two different sources be distinguished. 
1 California Agricultural Experiment Station, Circular No. 33. 
‘ oe United States Department of Agriculture, Farmers’ Bulletin No. 535, 
913. 
