When people say too much sugar can kill you, they're right. Molasses, a liquid sugar, is also a deadly liquid. In Boston, in 1919, 2.5 million gallons of hot molasses poured out of a broken tank killing 21 people, injuring hundreds, knocking over a fire station and collapsing the support of an elevated train.

In a previous article, I discussed dry sugars. This article will deal with liquid sugars. Part 3 will discuss artificial sweeteners.

Molasses:

Molasses is a liquid sugar extracted from the juice of the sugar cane or sugar beets. In making refined table sugar, the sugar cane is harvested, mashed, and the raw juices are boiled to extract the sugar grains for further processing. The remaining syrup is called first molasses.

First molasses is then thinned with water and re-boiled so that more raw sugar can be extracted. The leftover syrup from the second boiling is second molasses, and so on. After three or more boilings, molasses is called blackstrap, which has a bitter taste, and is used primarily for cattle feed and industrial purposes.

Molasses is sold in a variety of grades. The highest grade is made from clarified and reduced pure sugarcane juice, before the sugar extraction process begins. The Grandma Molasses Company sells this as their gold label molasses. Their green label is the first molasses described above. Either high grade or first molasses is appropriate for cooking. Molasses from sugar beets has a bitter taste, and is not sold for consumption.

Some manufacturers will make sugar and molasses from sugar cane which is picked unripe and then ripened through exposure to sulphur. In that case, molasses will be labeled sulphured. Although cheaper, try not to buy sulphured molasses the sulphur taste is especially retained in the syrup.

Treacle:

Treacle is a British term, a generic word for any syrup made in the process of refining sugar cane and it can range from very light to very dark. However, when used in cooking, treacle has come to mean the equivalent of dark molasses. If a British recipe calls for treacle, you can comfortably substitute dark molasses.

Golden Syrup:

In Britain, the lighter syrup which is produced when the sugar cane juice is first boiled is sometimes called light treacle but much more commonly, golden syrup. In the U.S. you can buy Lyles Golden Syrup. If you can't find golden syrup, dark corn syrup can be substituted, but to my taste golden syrup has a delicious butterscotch flavor that corn syrup lacks.

Corn Syrup:

Corn syrup is liquid sugar produced from cornstarch. The sugars are chiefly glucose and maltose, so corn syrup is not as sweet as regular sugar (sucrose). High fructose corn syrup - the primary sweetening ingredient in soda - is produced by converting some of the glucose to fructose. It is used in place of sucrose in many baked goods, besides drinks.

Light corn syrup is clarified and decolorized and usually has vanilla added. Dark corn syrup has caramel flavor and coloring added and has a stronger flavor. Light and dark corn syrups can be used interchangeably, based on the desired taste.

Besides its use as a flavoring agent, corn syrup has a second major role in cooking. It is an invert sugar, which means it stops recrystallization. When regular sugar is melted and becomes a syrup, it is prone to recrystallization, sometimes just by accidentally adding one unmelted crystal to the sugar syrup. Adding corn syrup - or an acid like lemon juice - will prevent this.

Honey:

Honey deserves an entire column to itself. It is also an invert sugar in which at least half the sugar is fructose, which is almost 1 ½ times sweeter than sucrose. So you can use less honey than table sugar for the same sweetness.

Honey is also valuable as it is the only liquid sugar which can reliably be used to replace granulated sugar in baking. To replace 1 cup of sugar, use ¾ cup of honey and decrease the liquid in the recipe by 4 tablespoons. To replace 1 cup of honey with sugar, use 1 ¼ cup of sugar and ¼ cup of water.

It is also advisable, when replacing sugar with honey, to lower your oven temperature by 25 degrees as honey causes baked goods to brown faster.

Maple Syrup:
As with honey, maple syrup deserves a column all to itself. Pure maple syrup is made by concentrating the slightly sweet sap of the sugar maple tree. By Federal law, pure maple syrup must be graded according to color and flavor. The grades are Grade A light amber, Grade A medium amber, Grade A dark amber, and Grade B. The darker the color, the stronger the flavor.

I recommend you try Grade B if you haven't already; I personally prefer it for all purposes. Others prefer it at least for baking, if not to serve at the table. Grade B syrup also usually costs less.

Sorghum, aka Sorghum Molasses:

Sorghum is a cane syrup, like molasses, but is extracted from sweet sorghum cane. The juice is purified and concentrated by evaporation into a clear, amber colored, mild flavored syrup. It is most often found in the south-eastern U.S. It can be substituted for light molasses.

Kings Syrup:

This is a brand name, associated with Amish food and considered indispensable to make an authentic shoofly pie. It is most like dark corn syrup.

Fruit Concentrates:

Fruit juice concentrates are often recommended as sugar substitutes. Feel free to experiment. To substitute for sugar, use ¾ cup of concentrate for every one cup of white sugar and decrease the liquid in the recipe by 3 tablespoons. Youll probably be most successful substituting, at most, half the sugar in the recipe.

Brown Rice Syrup:

During fermentation, the starch in brown rice converts to a sugar that is about half as sweet as regular sugar. This can be made into a syrup that is popular with health food advocates. The claim is that the brown rice syrup takes longer to be absorbed than other sugars, and as such supplies a good fuel source to the body but is less likely to be ultimately converted to fat. It can be substituted 1:1 for honey, but the end result will be significantly less sweet.