The Chemistry of Cookery

for this action is _allotropism_, and the substance is said to be _allotropic_, other conditioned; or _dimorphic_, two-shaped). Instead of being crystalline the sugar now becomes vitreous, it solidifies as a transparent amber-coloured glass-like substance, the well-known barley-sugar, which differs from crystalline sugar not only in this respect, but has a much lower melting-point; it liquefies between 190° and 212°, while loaf-sugar does not fuse below 320°. Left to itself, vitreous sugar returns gradually to its original condition, loses transparency, and breaks up into small crystals. In doing this it gives out the heat which during its vitreous condition had been doing the work of breaking up its crystalline structure, and therefore was not manifested as temperature. This return to the crystalline condition is retarded by adding vinegar or mucilaginous matter to the heated sugar; hence the confectioners’ name of ‘barley-sugar,’ which, in one of its old-fashioned forms, was prepared by boiling down ordinary sugar in a decoction of pearl barley. The French cooks and confectioners carry on the heating of sugar through various stages bearing different technical names, one of the most remarkable of which is a splendid crimson variety, largely used in fancy sweetmeats, and containing no foreign colouring matter, as commonly supposed. Though nothing is added, something is taken away, and this is some of the chemically-combined water of the original sugar, in the parting with which not only a change of colour occurs, but also a modification of flavour, as anybody may prove by experiment. When the temperature is gradually raised to 420°, the sugar loses two equivalents of water, and becomes _caramel_—a dark-brown substance, no longer sweet, but having a new flavour of its own. It further differs from sugar by being incapable of fermentation. The first stage of this cookery of sugar has now an archæological interest in connection with one of the lost arts of the kitchen, viz. the ‘spinning’ of sugar. Within the reach of my own recollection no evening party could pretend to be stylish unless the supper-table was decorated with a specimen of this art—a temple, a pagoda, or something