On Food and Cooking

applied to a different product, brown sugars
produced at the refinery using raw sugar as
the starting material, not the cane juice. All
ordinary brown sugar is also made in this way.
There are two ways to make refinery brown
sugars: redissolving the raw sugar in a syrup
of some kind and then recrystallizing it, so
that it retains some of the syrup on its crystal
surfaces; or refining the raw sugar all the way
to pure white sugar, and then coating or
“painting” its surfaces with a thin film of
syrup or molasses.
The basic difference between factory and
refinery brown sugars is that true factory
sugars retain more of the flavor of the original
cane juice, including green, fresh, and
vegetable-ocean aromas (from hexanol,
acetaldehyde, and dimethyl sulfide). Both
kinds have an important vinegar aroma (from
acetic acid), as well as caramel and buttery
notes (the buttery one from diacetyl, indeed
found in butter), and salty and bitter tastes