Text 20581, 128 rader
Skriven 2012-01-28 06:51:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av DAVE DRUM
Ärende: Sugars 142
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Out of curiosity I Googled "the three naturally occurring sugars"
- there are but seven entries, one of which doesn't count, because
the phrase doesn't mean that there are three in the universe but
rather three in the experiment; one crackpot one that doesn't tell 
you what the author thinks they are; and the other entries, which 
give five candidates for three spots. Glucose (aka dextrose),
fructose (aka laevulose), sucrose, lactose, and mannose, all of
which are naturally occurring sugars, no doubt about it, along
with others. Oh, by the way, one of those 7 is you.

 -=> Dave Drum said to Jim Weller <=-

 DD> the three naturally occurring sweeteners.
 DD> (glucose, sucrose (table sugar), and fructose).
 DD> other sugar compounds are manufactured in some way or other.
 JW> They are the big three for cooks. But depending on your definitions
 JW> of "sugar" and "manufactured" there are several more.

Not sugar compounds, compound sugars.

 JW> Lactose immediately springs to mind, a naturally occurring
 JW> di-saccharide (double sugar).
 DD> Perhaps I should have typed "simple" sugars.

Sucrose (table sugar) is not a simple sugar. It's a disaccharide
similar to lactose, only the former has fructose in it and the
latter galactose.

 JW> Would you consider the maltose in malted grains manufactured or
 JW> natural?
 DD> It's a simple sugar - about 1/3 as sweet as sucrose. But it is made my
 DD> malting - a process that does not occur naturally (AFAIK).

Maltose starts to be generated when grain sprouts. So it
has to occur in some measure naturally, though in the booze-
making process it is of course maximized.

 DD> Another naturally occurring sugar (even if "manufactured" in apiary
 DD> colonies) is honey. But, it contains all three of the Big 3 - fructose,
 DD> glucose and sucrose. And we all forgot about dextrose (grape sugar).
 DD> Even the wine bibbers. 

Dextrose is just another name for D-glucose. The thing that
really got me confused when I was a kid was that levulose
(laevulose) is another name for D-fructose, not for the
extremely rare (but contrary to Wikipedia existing in nature)
L-glucose. It's probably not a great sin to be thus confused,
as my father, with a PhD in organic chemistry, got it wrong.

 JW> If you limit yourself to the mono- and di-saccharides, the list is
 JW> short although greater than three.

So I decided to poke around a bit. The list is enormous.

I more or less trust Wikitruth on immutable fact. The article on
hexose (i.e., 6-carbon sugars) lists 6 aldohexoses, 5 occurring 
in nature in the D isomer, the other only in the L isomer: allose,
galactose, glucose, gulose, idose, mannose, talose, and L-aldose.
Also 4 ketohexoses: fructose, psicose, sorbose, and tagatose. 
Being careful in this case, I looked further and have found
scholarly reference to all of these, even the suspiciously named
psycose and two others that I had never heard of.

Under pentoses, there is a list of 6, with D- and L- forms. Some
exist free in nature, some not.

Those are just the C-5 and C-6 sugars, which anyone has to
acknowledge are sugars.

There are also sugars missing an oxygen that exist in nature.
Rhamnose from genus Rhus, for example.

Disaccharides found in nature include isomaltulose, lactose, 
maltose, sucrose, trehalose, and turanose (cited by Wikipedia
as not natural but exists in honeydew honey).

 JW> To a chemist, tri-saccharides and longer chain oligo-saccharides are
 JW> also sugars (but not the complex polysaccharides which are starches
 JW> even though they can be broken sown into sugars).

Raffinose is a trisaccharide that exists in nature, more
specifically cabbages and beans.

 DD> Title: White Wine Mold

Com Ruou
cat: Vietnamese, Chinese, rice, wine, dessert
yield: 1 batch

h - If Using Hong Kong Yeast
1 wine yeast ball (approx. 8g, about the diameter of a US quarter)
1 kg white or brown glutinous rice
h - If Using Vietnamese Yeast
1/2 kg white or brown glutinous rice
2 wine yeast balls (approx 5g, diameter about the size a US dime)
- or 5 small yeast balls (approx. 7g, diameter about 3/4 of a US dime)
h - Saltwater Solution for Shaping Rice Balls
1 c warm water
1/2 ts salt

Wash rice a few times; soak for a few hours (the longer you soak, 
the faster the rice will cook). If using brown glutinous rice 
then soak and cook as you would normal rice (in a pot with water). 
If using white glutinous rice, cook the rice by steaming. The rice
should be tender and moist. Grind yeast into a powder. Spread
cooked rice on a large tray and cool until warm. Sprinkle yeast
over rice and mix. Wet hands with saltwater solution and form
rice into small balls (this step is optional). Place rice balls
in a clean and dry container, cover tightly and place in a warm
place for rice to ferment.

How long it takes for the wine to mature depends on the
temperature at which it ferments. The process usually takes a few
days. After a few days there should be plenty of wine in the
container - enough for the rice balls to float in. The longer
you ferment the stronger the wine will be. Serve "young wine" as
a dessert. Over-fermented wine could be used to make Banh Bo in
place of the yeast or, the wine could be filtered, boiled and
use as a drinking wine or, to soak spices to make cooking wine.

Playing with My Food (an interesting site that is not always
factually reliable, especially when referring to stuff that
isn't Vietnamese)
pwmf.blogspot.com/2006/06/cm-ru-rice-wine-dessert.html

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