Honey and cane sugar are two of the most classic sources of sweetness, though honey has historically been scarce and expensive, and cane sugar was popularized very late in life, and its history is one of the great voyages plus the bloodshed of black slaves.

But the Chinese haven't always been bitter eaters, and it's not hard for even the average person to get a sweet bite. There are actually many ways to get a sweet taste, and one type of sugar, which is still everyday today, doesn't come from the classic sugar sources of honey, sugar cane or beets, or the niche sources of sugar maple, birch, or agave, it comes from our most everyday grain, and it has an ancient and delicious pedigree, and it still plays an important role in traditional cuisines everywhere, and it's called maltose.

01 What kind of sugar is maltose?

Maltose was called syrup [yí] sugar in ancient times, a kind of sugar derived from starch. Its appearance is actually quite technological.

We can feel the sweetness when we chew grain, and that's because enzymes in our saliva prompt the conversion of starch into sugar. And the process of producing this sugar utilizes the same principle, except that the catalyst has been changed to malt.

Maltose is made by hydrolyzing starch with the enzyme glycolytic enzyme produced during the germination of wheat. It is generally obtained by boiling rice, glutinous rice, millet, corn, sorghum and corn, and then reacting with a mixture of maltase enzymes produced by the germination of barley.

Northern Wei agricultural book "Qimin Essentials" quoted the former "Food Scripture" in the practice: "Take a stone of millet, cooking as millet, with the basin. Cork end of a bucket, stirring and. A night then get a dendro five buckets, fried into syrup." That is to say, one stone of millet was cooked into rice and put in a basin, plus one bucket of malt powder, and stirred well. After one night, you will get one dendro and five buckets of solution, and then you will get syrup by boiling and concentrating this solution over a low fire. [1]

Maltose has a soft, hard points, soft is a yellow-brown viscous liquid, called syrup; hard is caramel by filtering and purification, remove the dregs, mixed with the air solidified, is a porous yellow-white sugar cubes, called molasses [xíng].

"Qi Min Yao Ji" said, with millet such as sorghum rice, jik rice and other millet as raw materials out of the molasses, can be crystal clear like crystal.

In Japan, maltose is called water syrup, which is also transparent. It is an ingredient in many traditional wagashi, used to provide a glossy color to confections, and is sometimes used as a substitute for granulated sugar in some teriyaki sauces to add sweetness and thickening.

The Qimin Yaojutsu also records the preparation of black molasses, amber molasses, and nursing, which are the same as white molasses, except that the malt ingredients used are different.

Molasses has a long history, and although its different practices were first clearly documented in the Northern Wei agricultural book Qi Min Yao Ji, they actually existed much earlier, with molasses appearing as early as the Book of Songs.

02Where is maltose different?

Maltose is different from sucrose in that they are both disaccharides, but the molecular makeup is different. Maltose has a weaker sweetness than sucrose, about less than half the sweetness of sucrose.

Isn't the most important characteristic of sugar sweetness? Sucrose is so cheap today, so why do so many people still eat maltose?

First of all because maltose can be obtained from the most common grains, so it is the cheapest and most readily available.

Today it has been found that maltose has a different meaning for the teeth. Different types of sugar have different cariogenic properties, and maltose is less cariogenic than sucrose and glucose, and seems to be better for the teeth.

But don't forget another great feature of maltose, its high viscosity. Maltose is particularly sticky to the teeth, and there are persistent legends about it being able to be used to extract teeth.

Low sweetness of maltose does not mean low energy, and low cariogenicity does not mean no insect teeth. So don't just eat it openly because of that.

In addition to being used for thickening, maltose can be used to moisturize and color pastries and has always had a special role in baking.

03It's a tradition as well as a technical reserve

Also, and most importantly, eating maltose has been part of the culture itself.

Western Han Dynasty's Yang Xiong, "Dialect," Volume 13: "Where syrup is called molasses, it is the common language of Chen, Cai, Song and Wei from Guan to the east." The "Guan" here refers to the Hangu Pass. During the Han Dynasty, the Guanzhong area west of the Hangu Pass was called "syrup", while the Central Plains area east of the Hangu Pass was called "molasses". As a result, some later generations referred to molasses as "Guandong Sugar". [1]

Guandong sugar is also called Zao sugar, which has been inseparable from the custom of sacrificing to the stove. Similar candies have names such as New Year's sugar and Zaozao sugar. It can be seen that even if the caramel is cheap, it is also relative, and ordinary people can only let go of eating it once during the festival.

"Twenty-three sugar melon children stick", sugar melon, and Guandong sugar is a long history of northern sweets, generally also used for the stove, but not made into a stick shape, but with a line cut into a ball or melon shape, and then stick sesame seeds. The visual effect is tantalizing.

These are the pure malt candies that have been eaten to this day for an extended period of time, though they are often made with cane sugar now.

Medicinal sugar, too, is based on maltose. Sugar itself has often been used as medicine in the past, and medicinal candy is a food item that originated in apothecaries, where maltose was blended into the flavors of various herbs and flavors.

Famous actress Xin Fengxia once recorded in an article that the medicinal candies she remembered "were colorful, the green ones were mint-flavored, the golden ones were orange-flavored, the red ones were hawthorn-flavored, and the light blue ones were banana-flavored."

Medicine candies are not so common outside Tianjin these days, but the yells of selling them are still a holdover from traditional comedy.

Stirring the candies, I can't tell if it's a toy or a food, but it's a variety of malt candies of different colors, a magical little snack in the eyes of a child.

Candy blowing is an old Beijing folk craft, and the sugar used is also maltose. Compared with blowing candies, the craft of drawing candies is much more popular and uses maltose.

The traditional peanut candy also uses maltose.

Long-bearded candy, or Long-bearded pastry, is a traditionally famous dish, its taste is controversial, some people think it is delicious, some people can't accept it, but it represents the ultimate in craftsmanship effect, and it is also made with maltose as the main ingredient.

Traditionally, sachima is also made with caramel and honey, so it is also called "sugar dip".

Bobo candy is a famous specialty of Zhenning, Guizhou, which is made of caramel and fried sesame powder. The sweetness of these candies is unique in that they can be savored in large mouthfuls.

Besides sugar that is eaten straight out of the box, maltose also offers subtle gastronomic details. Crispy water is indispensable to Cantonese barbecue, and crispy water is indispensable to maltose, which under the action of high oil temperature will undergo a caramelization reaction, providing an attractive deep red color, and caramel aroma to the ingredients.

For today's people, maltose is not a necessary choice, but cane sugar and then strong maltose will not disappear, the traditional sweets are almost all related to it, outside of culture, maltose is a kind of technical reserves, more than one craft, there is more than one kind of possibilities, more than one road.

In order to this sweet, human beings are really very hard, have the opportunity to introduce you to more more interesting and more bizarre methods of sugar production.

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