Golden syrup

Golden syrup or light treacle is a thick amber-coloured form of inverted sugar syrup made in the process of refining sugar cane or sugar beet juice into sugar, or by treatment of a sugar solution with acid. It is used in a variety of baking recipes and desserts. It has an appearance similar to honey and is often used as a substitute where honey is unavailable or prohibitively expensive. Golden syrup or light treacle is a thick amber-coloured form of inverted sugar syrup made in the process of refining sugar cane or sugar beet juice into sugar, or by treatment of a sugar solution with acid. It is used in a variety of baking recipes and desserts. It has an appearance similar to honey and is often used as a substitute where honey is unavailable or prohibitively expensive. It is not to be confused with amber corn syrup or amber refined sugar. Regular molasses, or dark treacle, has both a richer colour and a strong, distinctive flavour. Formulated by the chemists Charles Eastick and his brother John Joseph Eastick at the Abram Lyle & Sons (now part of Tate & Lyle) refinery in Plaistow, London, Lyle's Golden Syrup was first canned and sold in 1885. In 2006 it was recognised by Guinness World Records as having the world's oldest branding and packaging. In 1863, Abram Lyle, owner of a cooperage, became owner of the Glebe Sugar Refinery in Greenock, in lieu of a debt. He became aware of the fact that a by-product of the sugar refining was a syrup which was usually sold off cheaply as pig-food. He thought that, given some adjustment, this syrup could be adapted for human consumption. His company did well and expanded to London. In 1883, Charles Eastick, an English chemist at the Abram Lyle & Sons (now part of Tate & Lyle) refinery in Plaistow, east London, further formulated how sugar could be refined to make a preserve and sweetener for cooking, bringing it to its current recipe. Charles and his brother John Joseph Eastick experimented with the refining process, of the bitter molasses-brown treacle—hitherto a waste by-product of sugar refining—into an eminently palatable syrup with the viscosity, hue, and sweetness of honey. The resulting product was marketed commercially in 1885 as 'golden syrup'. The name 'golden syrup' in connection with molasses had occurred, however, as early as 1840 in an Adelaide newspaper, the South Australian. The tin bears a picture of the rotting carcass of a lion with a swarm of bees and the slogan 'Out of the strong came forth sweetness'. This is a reference to the Biblical story in chapter 14 of the Book of Judges in which Samson was traveling to the land of the Philistines in search of a wife. During the journey he killed a lion, and when he passed the same spot on his return he noticed that a swarm of bees had formed a comb of honey in the carcass. Samson later turned this into a riddle at a wedding: 'Out of the eater came forth meat and out of the strong came forth sweetness'. While it is not known exactly why this image and slogan were chosen, Abram Lyle was a deeply religious man, and it has been suggested that they refer either to the strength of the Lyle company or the tins in which golden syrup is sold. In 1904, they were registered together as a trademark, and in 2006 Guinness World Records declared the mark to be the world's oldest branding and packaging. Lyle's golden syrup was awarded a Royal Warrant in 1911. In 1921, Lyle's business merged with Tate, a sugar-refining firm founded by Sir Henry Tate in 1859, to become Tate & Lyle. In 2010, Tate & Lyle sold its sugar refining and golden syrup business to American Sugar Refining. Originally, golden syrup was a product made at the white sugar refinery from the recovered mother liquor (recovered molasses) 'washed' off the raw sugar crystals in the process of creating white sugar. This liquor is generally known as refiners return syrup. Today most golden syrups are produced by a specialist manufacturer by inverting half the refiners return syrup to fructose and glucose and blending it back again; this ensures the product remains liquid and will never re-crystallize. Refiners syrup begins as a high-Brix, pale sucrose syrup made from white sugar and water designed to loosen the dried molasses found on raw sugar crystals. The sucrose saturated content of the initial 'green' syrup impedes sugar crystals from dissolving during the process of washing. The purpose is to mix the green syrup with raw sugar crystals to form a 'magma' of 8–10% moisture content at around 60–65 degrees C that is then washed with water in a centrifuge. After the first washing (often termed affination) the 'washed off' molasses combines with the sucrose syrup to generate refiners return syrup, which is generally re-used several times until deemed spent. The spent refiners return syrup is sold off to manufacturers for golden syrup production or is sent to a recovery section of the refinery often called the remelt house or boil-out section. Here it is reheated to crystallize and recover the sucrose it contains and that is returned to the affination stage. The final spent syrup left after the recovery process is sold as treacle (often called refiners molasses in older texts).