Ingredients · Sweetener
Brown Sugar
What it’s like, and how to use it
How to use it
In barbecue rubs, where it caramelises and helps form a crust — and burns if the heat is too high. In mole, baked beans, and anything that wants sweetness with depth. It hardens in the air because the molasses dries out.
With food
Pork and bacon. Chile and smoke. Apple. Bourbon. Butter. Pecan. Sweet potato. Coffee.
With spices
Smoked paprika, chipotle and mustard — a barbecue rub. Cinnamon and ginger. Cloves. Black pepper.
With tea
Assam, pu-erh and other strong black teas.
Its story
Where it comes from
Our lot does not say whether it is natural or refined brown sugar, which is the main thing that would distinguish one bag from another.
What happened
Brown sugar is the honest end of a dishonest history. Sugarcane is a New Guinea grass that travelled west with Austronesian voyagers, reached India where crystalline sugar was first made, spread through the Abbasid world by the eighth century — and then became the engine of the Atlantic slave trade after Columbus took it to the Caribbean in 1493. Refining it white was a technical achievement and a marketing one; brown sugar is simply the stage before that was completed, which is why the natural kind is sometimes sold as the less processed choice.
On the shelf with it
Every product it goes into.
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