what is your favorite natural sweetener?

[TNGhost]

WoodsRoamer, a couple of others occured to me. Both anise and true licorice have sweetening ability. The anise I've grown has the same type of property that stevia does, but not as intense.
Don't know if they're native in your area, or were available during the period of history your interested in.

 

[Wes/Tex]

Guess you guys wouldn't like the fact I put crackers and ketchup on my chili. Have since I was a child.

I do crackers too, usually if I'm having store bought...which isn't often. Helps "thicken" it like putting Masa flour in homemade.

The ketchup is kinda odd but my first wife's family used to put ketchup on top of the spaghetti sauce...and they were Texans! :shocked2: :wink:

 

[Wes/Tex]

have seen the term used in an account of 1830's Texas. It'd take me quite a while to find but quickly, it's method for the early rangers to make trail grub. In this case it was shelled corn with the kernels put in a big pot of sifted ashes and put over a fire till the corn browned. Then the sifted out the corn kernels and ground it in an old hand grinder. A pound bag of this with a pound of bag of roasted and rough ground coffee beans was all the took when they chased after raiding Comanches. Meat was free for the shooting, so corn and coffee was all they loaded on horseback. Seems like Banta called it "coal flour" too.

 

[zimmerstutzen]

Re Birch beer: we can still buy kegs of BREWED birch beer in this area. While it tastes similar to the bottled soda pop, it is better.
As for wintergreen, few people know what it really tastes like. Most commercial "winter green" flavored items are flavored using birch extract.

 

[satx78247]

NOPE. NOT usually hanging.

Any Texican who gets caught putting maple syrup in chili are just deported to OK.
(We cannot deport them to NM anymore, as those folks have "better taste" than to do such an awful thing.)

yours, satx

 

[WoodsRoamer]

okay thanks for all the info I was just wondering because I like hot tea and if I'm camping/hiking and didn't want to carry sugar I might have an idea as to how I might sweeten it. It would also be useful for cooking on the trail. Don't really have a persona are a time frame in mind I like mixing things from different time periods until I get something that works for me when I'm in the woods.

 

[satx78247]

Btw, NATURAL honey is great for sweeting in homemade wines/beer & of course mead.

Fwiw: BE CAREFUL when buying "cheap" and/or "supermarket brands" of "honey", as some of that stuff actually contains LITTLE actual honey.
(Some "cheap brands" of "honey" have as little as 25%, with the rest being water, "fillers", artificial color & corn syrup.)

yours, satx

 

[trent/OH]

Re Birch beer: we can still buy kegs of BREWED birch beer in this area. While it tastes similar to the bottled soda pop, it is better.

Zimmerstutzen, where do you live, that you can buy kegs of Birch Beer? Sounds like a place I need to visit.

 

[Grumpa]

There was a time when I enjoyed the hot stuff but, as I grow older, my stomach rebels.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

On the other hand spruce beer isn't the same animal, at least in the recipes I've used. The spruce merely replaces or enhances the flavoring/bitterness, normally provided by the hops, while the body of the beer remains malted barley....

..., Did bring up another point though, malted barley has certainly been available for centuries. When it became available as a sweetener in syrup and dried form I'm not sure, but it is used in baking I think.

:haha: If you used malt in a spruce beer, you didn't have actual, authentic spruce beer from the colonial period. :haha: It was an anti-scorbutic, and was made from spruce boiled in molasses and water. They didn't age it. They began to drink it immediately, and it fermented in the barrel as they consumed it. A soldier was allowed a quart a day. I've found six recipes, and they all produce a product of the same flavor. I've had people tell me it's greatly improved if you let it age a year...problem is they didn't let it "age" in any of the references that I have found.

IF you want to try a quick simulation of the authentic product... take equal parts of regular Listerine mouthwash mixed with diet Pepsi, but just take a sip... :barf:

As for malted barley... yes they had it for centuries in Europe. Here in the colonies, not so much. I have read where it was lamented in the Virginia Gazette prior to the AWI that while barley grew well in Virginia, nobody grew it for want of a malting house. Seems there was a catch-22 involved... nobody wanted to build a malting house without a barley crop nearby....and nobody wanted to plant barely without a malting house nearby. Sam Adams, the founding father, ran his malting house into bankruptcy by 1766... the fellow the beer company is named after was a decendant with the same name.

Dried Malt Extract, coming from malt syrup, as far as I know, is from the second half of the 19th century.

LD

 

[zimmerstutzen]

Eastern PA. Birch beer is still popular in the Reading and Allentown areas. There was a bar in Tower City where the guy brewed his own Birch, root and ginger beers complete with alcoholic content. I grew up near a little village in NE Berks county named Kutztown. Kutztown Bottling Company's Birch Beer is their best seller. One of the few products that still has Pennsylvania Dutch words on the labels. "Nix Besser"

We still keep a couple bottles of the stuff around for when a family member gets a stomach flu. Old folk remedy here.


Many years ago, I made Apple beer. Made using reconstituted dried apple peels, yeast and a bit of honey.

While not really a sweetener, it was sometimes used as such, dried apples were a staple among early German settlers. called "schnitz" A traditional soup was "schnitz und knepp" Dried apples and ham Not many folks think of putting apples in soup these days. Apple butter was sometimes an addition to baking recipes to sweeten and moisten baked goods. In fact we still use it to this day as an ingredient in some quick breads like muffins, etc.

 

[tenngun]

I gave up sweetners about 2 years ago. The more I don't eat them the less I want them, after a while you loose your taste for them and when I get a bite of something sweet it taste like a spoon full of sugar and Little else.I did note in this list an absence of reference to sorgum. It has a sharp flavor I never cared for but is very popular. loyalist Dave carries maple sugar even though he feels its out of place for his place, but lots of maple sugar was traded about the country. Washington had even invested in maple sugar farming, but the price couldn't compeat with jamacian sugar. Honey bees are a europen import bumble bee honey is vary tasty,although not much of it in a hive. I've only gotten it twice in my life.

 

[coloradoclyde]

When did the sugar beet enter the picture?

 

[satx78247]

ALSO consider natural/unfiltered Ribbon Cane Syrup, that is devoid of sulphur/preservative/anything but ribbon cane juice that's been extracted by a mule-drawn mill/cooked down & canned by the half gallon "tin" bucket.
(A family in Panola County TX has made this natural syrup since the 1830s, on their farm. = The family, at least to my knowledge NEVER ships their product, as they can sell all that they can make at the local farmer's market. - You pick it up in Panola County or do without.)

Anybody know of another source? - I like that syrup but am not interested in driving 250 miles one way to buy a gallon!

yours, satx

 

[Ron LaClair]

Buckwheat honey, very dark and rich

 

[satx78247]

I've never (to my knowledge) eaten buckwheat honey. - Sounds FINE to me.
(Crimson Clover honey, from the TBA, is frequently dark mahogany in color & really rich/thick. = It does a fine job of replacing molasses, one for one, in things like gingerbread & raison bran muffins.)

yours, satx

 

[Loyalist Dave]

When did the sugar beet enter the picture?

A German chemist figured out how to get the sugar out of the beet in the middle of the 18th century, but it wasn't a mass produced situation until the beginning of the 19th century. I think the French under Napoleon started extraction on a large scale.

LD

 

[coloradoclyde]

Fascinating! :thumbsup:
Maybe the topic question should have been: “Who makes their own sweetener?” :hmm:

 

[TNGhost]

On the other hand spruce beer isn't the same animal, at least in the recipes I've used. The spruce merely replaces or enhances the flavoring/bitterness, normally provided by the hops, while the body of the beer remains malted barley....

..., Did bring up another point though, malted barley has certainly been available for centuries. When it became available as a sweetener in syrup and dried form I'm not sure, but it is used in baking I think.

:haha: If you used malt in a spruce beer, you didn't have actual, authentic spruce beer from the colonial period. :haha: It was an anti-scorbutic, and was made from spruce boiled in molasses and water. They didn't age it. They began to drink it immediately, and it fermented in the barrel as they consumed it. A soldier was allowed a quart a day. I've found six recipes, and they all produce a product of the same flavor. I've had people tell me it's greatly improved if you let it age a year...problem is they didn't let it "age" in any of the references that I have found.

IF you want to try a quick simulation of the authentic product... take equal parts of regular Listerine mouthwash mixed with diet Pepsi, but just take a sip... :barf:

As for malted barley... yes they had it for centuries in Europe. Here in the colonies, not so much. I have read where it was lamented in the Virginia Gazette prior to the AWI that while barley grew well in Virginia, nobody grew it for want of a malting house. Seems there was a catch-22 involved... nobody wanted to build a malting house without a barley crop nearby....and nobody wanted to plant barely without a malting house nearby. Sam Adams, the founding father, ran his malting house into bankruptcy by 1766... the fellow the beer company is named after was a decendant with the same name.

Dried Malt Extract, coming from malt syrup, as far as I know, is from the second half of the 19th century.

LD

Wow lots of good stuff in this thread.

LD, molasses or malted barley same idea. Beer is a term that has been played fast and loose with over the centuries. Many now make gluten free "beer" with molasses being the major fermentable(so I guess the colonials were ahead of their time, maybe they had a solution for globa...I mean climate change too. :grin: ). So boil the spruce with malted barley and water or boil it in molasses and water, same basic idea, just a different flavor profile. (btw my spruce beer didn't taste like Listerine and Pepsi, wasn't a world beater but it wasn't that bad). Changing the type of molasses would change the profile, adding hops or not along with the spruce, same thing. I got interested in spruce beer 'cause I have some growing in the yard, and, being of Norse heritage, because it was a popular flavorant for beer in Scandanavia.


As far as sugar beets, the Napoleanic wars, in the early 19th century, disrupted the flow of cane sugar from the East Indies and gave rise to the impetus for sugar beet production in France, the basis of which was provided by the research of the German chemist you mentioned, Andreas Margraff, some 50 or so years earlier.

 

[TNGhost]

tenngunn,

Didn't know bumble bees made honey, good information. I have an old moose hide hanging up in the garage that I've been going to do something with for a while. I noticed bumble bees flying in and out of it all summer and was waiting for it to get cold to maybe get rid of it. First I'm going to look for honey now though Thanks!