boiling it down into a thick syrup to
concentrate and crystallize the sucrose
draining the impurity-laden syrup from
the solid crystals
washing the remaining syrup from the
crystalsThe cane stalks were first crushed and
pressed, and the resulting juice was cleared of
many organic impurities by heating it with
lime and a substance such as egg white or
animal blood, which would coagulate and trap
the coarse impurities in a scum that could be
skimmed off. The remaining liquid was then
boiled down in a series of shallow pans until it
had lost nearly all of its water, and poured
into cone-shaped clay molds a foot or two
long with a capacity of 5 to 30 lb/2–14 kg.
There it was cooled, stirred, and allowed to
crystallize into “raw sugar,” a dense mass of
sucrose crystals coated with a thin layer of
syrup containing other sugars, minerals, and