Treacle () is any uncrystallised syrup made during the refining of

sugar Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or double ...

.Oxford Dictionary The most common forms of treacle are golden syrup, a pale variety, and a darker variety known as black treacle, similar to

molasses Molasses () is a viscous substance resulting from refining sugarcane or sugar beets into sugar. Molasses varies in the amount of sugar, method of extraction and age of the plant. Sugarcane molasses is primarily used to sweeten and flavour foods ...

. Black treacle has a distinctively strong, slightly bitter flavour, and a richer colour than golden syrup. Golden syrup treacle is a common sweetener and condiment in

British cuisine British cuisine is the specific set of cooking traditions and practices associated with the United Kingdom. Historically, British cuisine meant "unfussy dishes made with quality local ingredients, matched with simple sauces to accentuate flavou ...

, found in such dishes as treacle tart and treacle sponge pudding.

Etymology

Historically, the Middle English term was used by herbalists and apothecaries to describe a medicine (also called '' theriac'' or ''theriaca''), composed of many ingredients, that was used as an antidote for poisons, snakebites, and various other ailments. ''Triacle'' comes from the Old French , in turn from (unattested and reconstructed)

Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve ...

, which comes from Latin , the latinisation of the Greek (), the feminine of (), 'concerning venomous beasts', which comes from (), 'wild animal, beast'.

Production

Treacle is made from the syrup that remains after sugar is refined. Raw sugars are first treated in a process called affination. When dissolved, the resulting liquor contains the minimum of dissolved non-sugars to be removed by treatment with

activated carbon Activated carbon, also called activated charcoal, is a form of carbon commonly used to filter contaminants from water and air, among many other uses. It is processed (activated) to have small, low-volume pores that increase the surface area avail ...

or bone char. The dark-coloured washings are treated separately, without carbon or bone char. They are boiled to grain (i.e. until sugar crystals precipitate out) in a vacuum pan, forming a low-grade (boiled mass) which is centrifuged, yielding a brown sugar and a liquid by-product—''treacle''. Black treacle naturally contains relatively high levels of sulphite (>100ppm, expressed in sulphur dioxide equivalent). These levels are deemed safe for the majority of the population, but some allergic and respiratory reactions have been reported particularly amongst asthmatics, so that the United States Food and Drug Administration requires that levels over 10ppm, i.e. >10mg/kg, be declared on the ingredients label.

In culture

A traditional Cornish fisherman's celebratory drink is "Mahogany", made from two parts local

gin Gin () is a distilled alcoholic drink that derives its flavour from juniper berries (''Juniperus communis''). Gin originated as a medicinal liquor made by monks and alchemists across Europe, particularly in southern Italy, Flanders and the Ne ...

—now usually Plymouth Gin—mixed with one part black treacle. In chapter 7 of Lewis Carroll's '' Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'', the Dormouse tells the story of Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie, who live at the bottom of a well. This confuses Alice, who interrupts to ask what they ate for sustenance. "The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and then said, 'It was a treacle-well.'" This is an allusion to the so-called "treacle well", the curative St Margaret's Well at Binsey, Oxfordshire.p14, ''Oxford in English literature: the making, and undoing, of "the English Athens"'' (1998), John Dougill, University of Michigan Press, .

References

Citations

Bibliography

External links

*
Old 'Recipes4us' page "Treacle Origin"CSR Sugar company of Australia – TreacleSugar Australia website – refiner and marketer for CSR limited.
{{Sugar Sugar Sugar substitutes Syrup