high sucrose content — about 15% — in its
fluids. Sugar cane originated in New Guinea
in the South Pacific and was carried by
prehistoric human migration into Asia.
Sometime before 500 BCE, people in India
developed the technology of making
unrefined, “raw” sugar by pressing out the
cane juice and boiling it down into a dark
mass of syrup-coated crystals. By 350 BCE,
Indian cooks were combining this dark gur
with wheat, barley, and rice flours and with
sesame seeds to make a variety of shaped
confections, some of them fried. A couple of
centuries later, Indian medical texts
distinguished among a number of different
syrups and sugars from cane, including
crystals from which the dark coating had been
washed. These were the first refined white
sugars.
Early Confectionery in Southwest Asia