Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 February 1920 — New Process an Aid in Reducing Sugar Shortage [ARTICLE]

New Process an Aid in Reducing Sugar Shortage

The housewife may be experiencing continued difficulty in securing sugar, but this commodity might have been more scarce and the price much higher had not ice-cream manufacturers adopted a new process suggested by the agricultural experiment station of the University of Illinois. In the last year and a half a vast majority of the makers of this semiessential food have saved approximately 30 per cent of the amount of sugar formerly used and effected this saving without decreasing output or lowering the quality of the product. Of course, there is no way telling just how great a saving this particular work of the university has meant to the state and nation, but it has certainly been large, because it has enabled ice-cream manufacturers who used the suggestion to maintain output from the time the government cut their sugar rations to eighty per cent of the pre-war amounts to the present time. Here is the suggestion that was sent out by the university: It was found that cane or beet sugar could be inverted by the simple process of heating in the presence of acid, the chemical reaction taking place resulting in the same products being formed as are formed when sugar is taken into the human bodk And so 100 pounds of sugar, 44 pounds of water and 50 grams of powdered tartaric-acid, «ixedr together-aud bulled flora thirty or thirty-five minutes in a steam pressure kettle or open candy kettle, produced 140 pounds of syrup. The resultant inverted sugar syrup was not unlike strained honey in appearance and taste. It contained 71.4 per cent sugar, tasted considerably sweeter than sugar, did not crystallize, and mixed readily with the ingredients of ice-cream. It could be used in the same proportions as sugar —the amount necessary for ten gallons of icecream being six and one-half to seven pounds. So successful did the tests prove that manufacturers immediately adopted it and are continuing to use it today. It was readily seen that by using the method the sugar supply could literally be stretched, for with only 71.4 per cent as much sugar used as formerly, the same degree of sweetness was obtained. There was thus a saving of approximately 300,000 pounds out of every million pounds formerly used.