Palm sugar vs. cane sugar

Gardener972

What is the difference? Can you taste the difference? Is one used in certain foods over the other? Which do you prefer?

delhiwala

Palm Sugar is brownish in colour whereas Cane sugar is white. They do taste differently......

Palm sugar is said to contain more nutritional value, specially on calcium count.

Palm sugar is used in traditional desserts of Coastal regions of India.

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Nick-H

Cane sugar is not white!

Refined sugar is white. Unrefined cane sugar is brown, and can be as dark brown as jaggery, and even stickier. Much of the "white sugar" bought in UK shops does not even come from sugar cane.

By the way, does jaggery come from cane?

Gametotravel

Most parts of India sweetmeat shops have items made from gur.
An interesting link http://www.nandyala.org/mahanandi/ar...cane-and-palm/

Shakkar(powdered form) is also very popular; can be had with whole wheat flat breads
www.eastwestbazaar.com

delhiwala

Yes right ! but only refined sugar is available in the Indian market, hence I called it white.

Jaggery (Gur) come from Sugar Cane as well as palm also... Shakkar is also made by the jaggery route.....While jaggery is allowed to form cakes, shakkar is powdered.

And in most of the indian sweets, cane sugar is used. In West Bengal some sweets are made from Jaggery.....

saajan_20

Sweet s made from jaggery are good to be consumed in colder places .Jagerry (gur) has a hot effect (no pun intended) people with low hemoglobin even take a pinch with water and it does wonders to their hemoglobin level . The sugar white crystal is also referred as bone sugar !!! There is a process of bleaching it which I a int aware of now shall find out and put it here later !!

haydn

no comparison. palm sugar gives a lush, floral, caramalised taste. great to add a small amount to stirfries(great with ginger and basil) or 'curries'. white/refined sugar is all sweetness and no substance!(we all know that type).
yumm!

Gardener972

Aren't they the same or am I confused?

I'm going to do a taste test today with jaggery, palm sugar, and raw sugar to see if there's a difference. No one has mentioned if palm sugar is used in chai or coffee. Is it?

delhiwala

No ! Bengali sweets are a sub set of Indian sweets.........

In olden days all Indian sweets were prepared using Jaggery only. But now most of the north Indian sweets like Jalebi, Burfi, Laddoos, launj etc are prepared from Refined Sugar.....They'll taste differently, if prepared with jaggery.

Some Bengali sweets like Sandesh are still prepared using gur....infact Sandesh made with fresh jaggery of the season is called nutan gure Sandesh and is considered superior to the sandesh prepared with stored jaggery.

Rasgulla, a prominent Bengali sweet is prepared with refined sugar........

In south India also some dishes like Payasam are traditionally made with jaggery......

Sweets/desserts prepared with jaggery do have a different taste as in jaggery making molasses doesn't get removed and it lends a brown colour to the jaggery. It's responsible for the creamy texture also.

Palm sugar was used in Chai & Coffee, but now everybody has switched to refined sugar....

If you have visited Barista or Cafe Coffee Day, you might have noticed, single use pack of Demera sugar which is brown in colour.....it is somewhht similar in taste to gur as it has some traces of molasses in it and is unrefined....

Gardener972

Good info. deliwala... thanks!

OK, the taste test results:
First, we don't use bleached white sugar so that was not one of the contestants. I have compared the unrefined sugar to bleached white sugar in the past and there is a slight difference, raw being better.
For coffee, there is a noticeable difference using jaggery. It has that almost heavy, somewhat molasses, slightly "burnt" (though good), full-bodied flavor as opposed to unbleached raw sugar which is just sweet with no flavor. The palm sugar, on the other hand, has a smooth, buttery, full, well-rounded, warm, taste...quite different from the other two.
For chai, due to the spices, the distinctness is not as pronounced although the differences are the same as above.
For me, palm sugar is the CLEAR winner!
Anyone else up for a taste test?

Nick-H

As somebody said (Delhiwalla maybe), the cane sugar we see in our shops is almost 100% white, refined stuff. I've seen Demorara (sp?) but as an absurdly expensive imported thing.

So, not much chance of taste tests.

I've meant to try chai made with jaggery, but not got around to it. Adds to the works too, as it comes as big, hard lumps that have to be smashed .

Gardener972

Nick, what is Demorara? The cane sugar I purchased is tan, thick (like peanut butter) and somewhat creamy. They had several varieties, from the creams to hard blocks that were brown. I found it in an Asian grocery store and it's very inexpensive. "Product of Thailand" it says.

Haylo

Demorara sugar might just be a British thing, it's semi-refined cane suger which comes in large crystals, maybe a sixteenth of an inch. I think it's called turbenado sugar in the states if that's any help?

My absolute favorite sugar is muscovado, which is about as unrefined as you can get, a bit like me! It's a very dark brown colour of much smaller grains than Demerara, and it's slightly sticky in texture, and it tastes like toffee. Makes coffee taste YUM!

In England at least we also get "light brown sugar" and "dark brown sugar", which are just refined sugar with a set amount of molasses added back to the mix. This is a crazy old world!

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Nick-H

Muscovado.

Just spoon straight into mouth!

Yum!

Dentist?

Merchant

The answers are out there:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demerara_(sugar)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaggery