Chapter 84 Case File 2: Witch Carnival (5)
The coins jingled as they fell into the cash register, and the skeleton's upper and lower jaws creaked, making him laugh for a long time.
The dine-in customers have changed several times, and takeout sales are booming - this is all thanks to the beavers' contribution of a large number of disposable bamboo bowls, chopsticks, bamboo sticks and the household magician's [shelling magic]. After all, this world has not yet developed disposable plastic products.
After a few hours of trial operation, Jiangyou felt that it would be necessary to get some more convenient grass-leaf woven baskets tomorrow. The bamboo bowls were consumed too quickly, and he didn't know if they would be enough to last through tonight.
It was just past ten o'clock, the first wave of carnival food peak had just passed, and the second wave was still brewing.
A dance was taking place in the bonfire square, and most of the customers had flocked there. Only a few tables of dine-in customers were still eating and drinking at the stalls, giving Jiangyou and the others time to rest and recuperate.
Most of the hundreds of kilograms of crayfish have been sold. Just now, Jiangyou used all three stoves, and all the big and small pots and casseroles were used one after another. At the busiest time, even the Crucible of Time had to work hard to cook the crayfish. If Andre saw this, he would probably complain silently about the waste of food.
Jiangyou chuckled for a while, and took out the pork belly she bought while there were not many customers.
She used the stove fire to burn off the pig hair on the skin, soaked the blood in the meat with clean water, blanched it and set it aside to drain.
Next, she cleaned the iron pan, poured in a small amount of peanut oil, added the malt sugar she bought from the witches, and slowly fried the sugar color over low heat.
This is a patient and delicate job. It must be heated slowly over low heat, and stirred constantly with a spatula to ensure even heating.
The maltose gradually melted in the pot, turning yellow bit by bit, and then gradually developing into a bright reddish brown. As Jiang You stirred, his thoughts gradually diverged.
According to the information Jiangyou had gathered from Aunt Wolf, the witches, and Andrei, the country's sugar industry was still very underdeveloped. The reason was simple: Huntington, a country in the north at a high latitude, lacked the most basic raw material for sugar production: sugarcane.
Even though this was a magical Western fantasy world, the raw materials for sugar production were eerily similar to those of her previous life. Currently, the only known raw materials for sugar production were sugarcane and malt. Making sugar from malt was a secret known only to the witches who worked with wheat daily, and the production process was complex and meticulous, not widely known.
The habits of the sugarcane in this magical world are similar to those of the sugarcane in Takuya's original world, and are mainly distributed in tropical and subtropical regions.
They need a warm and humid climate, plenty of sunlight and fertile soil to grow.
In Jiangyou's world, sugarcane is primarily cultivated between 33°N and 30°S. Its optimal growth temperature is 25°C-32°C, a temperature simply unattainable in the Principality of Huntington. Even if a few days of high temperatures could reach this level during the hottest months of the year, it would still be completely inadequate for cultivation.
Therefore, sugarcane was not introduced even to Holly's botanical garden, let alone other areas.
As a result, 99% of the various sugars needed by the Principality of Huntington had to be imported from southern countries half a world away. Even with the help of magic, transporting large quantities of goods over long distances was still an expensive and dangerous undertaking.
Along the way, they have to go through many storms, cross the ocean, wade through mountains and ridges, and make a road where there is no road. They may even lose a lot of goods for various reasons - shipwreck, overturn, robbery by bandits... The merchants' lives may not be saved, let alone the goods.
It's normal to charge a few hundred million more for the transportation of sugar that has gone through so many hardships to reach the Principality of Huntington... right?
Because sugar is expensive, people try not to use it if they can, and they just grit their teeth and bear it, and get by like this.
Only wealthy princes and nobles would indulge in sweets at will, while ordinary people... even middle-class people like Aunt Wolf who lived a comfortable life, were reluctant to buy too much sugar.
Due to this limitation, people have even invented a way of eating that is extremely stingy: they will not mix sugar into food, but will directly dip it with a small spoon and hold it on the tip of the tongue to ensure that every piece of sugar melts on the tongue. After enjoying the thorough sweetness, they will use the aftertaste to taste other foods.
Jiang You was completely baffled by this. As everyone knows, after eating very sweet fruit, less sweet fruit will only taste sour. She was curious about what kind of flavor those people would experience after eating candy and then other foods.
But... hey, when resources are extremely scarce, people don't have that many choices. Jiang You understands this very well.
Jiangyou thought about it. In her memory, the sugar industry based on sugarcane also originated in India, gradually spread to Arabia and China, and continued to spread to the whole world.
In fact, in ancient times, the ancestors of the Chinese people have been eating sugar obtained by gelatinizing, saccharifying and concentrating the starch of grains, or maltose made by sprouting, crushing and fermenting barley and wheat. There was no difference in the names of the two in ancient times, and they were collectively called "malt sugar".
Sugarcane is difficult to preserve. Although this plant has been cultivated since the Warring States Period, the Western Han Dynasty, and the Eastern Han Dynasty, and it was discovered that the juice extracted from it could be boiled into "rock honey" or "grain sugar", it was not until the reign of Emperor Taizong of Tang that sugarcane was promoted in Yangzhou and other places after the sugar-making technology was introduced from Magadha (India) and the ancestors made localized improvements based on their local resources and climate.
In 674 AD, after the "drip method" for making white sugar was invented, sugarcane gradually emerged on the stage of history and became equal to malt sugar. It was not until the Song Dynasty that sugarcane was transformed from a luxury for the nobility into an affordable food for ordinary people.
Europeans were not so lucky. In the 9th century, when the world was developing at a similar pace, sugarcane and sugar had not yet been widely introduced to Europe. They were only available through small-scale trade with Arab merchants, supplied as a precious spice to nobles and high-ranking clergy, and used only in expensive desserts and medicines. Rather than being an everyday seasoning, it was more a symbol of wealth and power.
At the time, Europeans primarily used honey as a source of sweetness—a fact similar to this world, except that the people of Huntington hadn't yet learned how to keep bees and harvest honey artificially. For them, honey was more like a lucky drop from the sky than a stable harvest.
Under these circumstances, it's no wonder the people of Huntington don't bother using sugar or honey to make marmalade. Even with the modern recipes Takumi knows of, achieving the right sweetness requires 400-500 grams of sugar for every 400-600 grams of fruit (about four bitter oranges)—a practice the people of Huntington consider like pouring gold into a cesspool.
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