Ingredients · Sweetener

Demerara Sugar

Demerara Sugar
Amber, 97 to 99 per cent pure sucrose, and centrifuged like turbinado — lighter in colour and a little drier. One product carries it. In practice it and turbinado are near-interchangeable, and which one a label names often has more to do with where it was packed than with what is in the bag.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partCrystal
KindSweetener
CaffeineCaffeine-free
TasteLight caramel sweetness, amber and dry; a shade lighter than turbinado

How to use it

In rubs and on baked goods, where the crystal stays crunchy. In coffee. Interchangeable with turbinado in almost any use.

With food

Coffee. Pork. Citrus. Butter and pastry. Rum. Oats.

With spices

Cinnamon. Smoked paprika. Chile. Black pepper. Allspice.

With tea

Any black tea taken with sugar.

Its story

Where it comes from

Named for the Demerara region of what is now Guyana, though sugar sold under the name is made in many places. Our lot names no origin.

What happened

The name is a place, and the place is a colony. Demerara was a Dutch and then British sugar colony on the coast of what is now Guyana, worked by enslaved Africans, and the site in 1823 of one of the largest slave uprisings in the British Caribbean. The sugar that carries the name today is made all over the world; the name is what survived. That is worth knowing about a bag of sugar.

On the shelf with it

Every product it goes into.

Every ingredient in the shop

Explore

Other ways in

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