Holiday Cooking – Sugar Cane

I love the Christmas holidays, and relish the traditions, gift giving, decorations, and music that make it special. With a late Thanksgiving, there is less time for preparations, so only the most important items get done. High on the list is baking and cooking. For a short time, the palate is more important than the waistline! As in past years, I’m taking a look at some of the spices and ingredients that go into the new and traditional holiday recipes we use to celebrate the season, using the Lore of Spices, written by Jan-Öjvind Swahn. This year I’m starting with one of the most basic ingredients – sugar!

Saccharum officinarum is in the Poaceae family (also called Gramineae, the grass plants). This important family includes bamboo and grasses used in landscaping. Sugar cane originated in India, but its cultivated form is thought to have descended from a wild form that is no longer in existence (plants were bred to produce the best yield of sugar sap). The cultivated plants were traded and grown across the East Indies and Pacific Ocean, and often chewed to release the sweet flavor. At some point, Indians discovered the sap could be boiled into sugar syrup, which was used as a flavoring and a medicine.

Botanical illustration of Saccharum officinarum from Koehler's Medicinal Plants.
Published before 1923 and public domain in the United States.

According to Swahn, Indians began to dry sugar syrup into crystals five centuries before Christ, making it easier to transport and trade. The Chinese grew sugar cane as early as the fourth century A.D.; Persians in the sixth century (they also learned to refine sugar to remove impurities). Arabs grew and refined sugar using modern, chemical techniques in the eighth century. European crusaders came into contact with Arab sugar in the eleventh century, and European explorers grew the cane in their tropical colonies starting in the fifteenth century. Today sugar is grown all over the world in tropical and subtropical climates.

Sugar cane shoots can grow to 15 feet  high and up to two inches thick. The sap originates in the lower part of the cane. Leaves are deciduous and sheathed; inflorescence is panicled racemes; spikelets are in pairs (one sessile, and one pedicelled, both bisexual). Seeds are encased in glumes (basal bracts), lemma, and palea, with an external stigma like feathery antennae. The canes are cut every 12 – 15 months. The cane is crushed between rollers; the pressed plant parts are leached; and the liquid boiled to produce sugar syrup, then dried to form crystals.