Sugar from Coal Tar

Feilding Star, Volume VIII, Issue 112, 29 March 1887, Page 3

Sugar from Coal Tar

[Communicated.]

The following extract from an article in Chambers' Journal for February last will no doubt be interesting to your readers : — " Who would have dreamt of obtaining: sugar from a substance so uninviting as coal-tar ? aud such sugar too ! Nothing known at the recent Edinburgh. Exhibition by the sugar manufacturers could equal it. Here are some of its properties. It is a white crystalline powder, easily soluble in warm water, and it possesses 230 times the sweetening power of the best cane or beetroot sugar. One part of this saccharine dissolved in ten thousand parts of water produces a solution of a distinctly sweet taste. A. substance to which the name " destro-saccharine" has been given is prepared by adding one part of saccharine to between one and two thousand parts of glucose* " and is said to be scarcely distinguishable in taste from ordinary sugar ; | more over, it is cheaper than real sugar even at the present high price of saccharine, namely fifty shillings a pound. The bitterest genuine solution, or acid drink, is rendered so eweet by the addition of a small portion of saccharine, that not the least trace of the bitter principle of the acid can be tasted. VVill saccharine supply the place of sugar ? The answer, ao far as can at present be judged, is that it will. It possesses many advantages, over sugar. It is very stable, and not subject to influences which produce mould and decay. Iu small quantities it produces no injurious effects on the human system, but passes unchanged through it. This is of considerable importance to diabetic patients and others on whom sugar acts detrimentally; It.possesses moderately strong antiseptic powers. This would be taken advantage of in jam, preserves, and such like ; moreover jams^could be made to consist almost, entirely of fruit instead of containing, as at present, so large a proportion of sugar. Although at 5s a pound, it is cheaper than sugar, this price will probably be consider- j ably reduced when the manufactory, started some time ago in Germany, makes its, put put felt in tke market — probably, indeed, before this reaches the eyes of our readers