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Sugar cube

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Macro photo of sugar cubes

Sugar cubesarewhite sugargranules pressed into smallcubes.It is usually used by individuals to sweeten drinks. There are two main ways of using the sugar cubes: directly dissolving the cubes in the drink or placing the cube into the mouth while drinking.[1]

Size and packaging

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Two-piece sugar cube packaging (Germany)
Individually wrapped sugar cubes (France)

The typical size for each cube is between 16 by 16 by 11 millimetres (0.6 by 0.6 by 0.4 inches) and 20 by 20 by 12 millimetres (0.8 in × 0.8 in × 0.5 in), corresponding to the weight of approximately 3–5grams.[2][3]However, the cube sizes and shapes vary greatly, for example,playing card suits-shaped pieces are produced under the name "bridge cube sugar".[3]

The typical retail packaging weight is 0.5kilogram(1pound) or 1 kilogram / 2 pounds.[3]

In 1923 German wholesaler Karl Hellmann started packaging pair of cubes into individual wrappings with advertisements or collectible pictures on the sleeves. Originally very popular incafés,they were quickly replaced in the beginning of the 21st century by granulated sugar in packets and sticks.[2]

Manufacturing

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When making the cubes, the granulated sugar is slightly (2–3%) moistened, placed into a mold and heated so that the moisture can escape. The firmness, density, and speed of dissolution of the cube are controlled via the crystal size of the granulated sugar, amount of water/steam added, molding pressure, and speed of drying.[3]The dissolution speed is important, as the consumers that place the sugar into their mouths prefer denser, slower-dissolving sugar.[1]

The input material usually requires a wide distribution of sizes (from 500micronsand up) for the cube stability.[1]

The cubes are made on the highly automated lines capable of processing up to 50 tons of sugar per day. Typically, one of the three common processes is used[1]to produce the more popular soft cubes:[4]

  • Vibro process of Swedish Sugar Corporation (from the late 1950s[4]) utilizesvibrationto fill the molds and to get the formed cubes out. Heat radiation oven is used for drying;
  • Chambon process was invented in France in 1949[4]and uses a rotating molding unit and a vertical dryer;
  • Elba process is similar to Chambon.

History

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Sugarloaf cutting box with tools

Becausesugarloafswere hard to break into manageable pieces,[4]dangerous tools were used in the process (apparently,Jakub Kryštof Rad,the inventor of the first sugar cube, started his effort after his wife hurt herself while chopping the sugarloaf).[5]The resulting pieces were irregular in size; if the piece was too large, eithersugar nipshad to be used, or the piece had to be dunked into the tea cup like a donut, and after sufficient dissolution taken out to dry for the next use (the latter option was described byLev Tolstoyin his "Where Love Is, God Is":"Stepanich drank his glass, turned it upside down and set the leftover bit of sugar on it ").[5]

Rad had made the first sugar cubes in the early 1840s by pressing moist sugar into a tray resembling the modernice cube traysand letting the cubes dry. Despite Rad obtaining a patent in 1843, his business was ultimately unsuccessful.[4][6]

The next breakthrough came almost 30 years later, whenEugen Langen,ofPfeifer & Langen,used acentrifugeto produce blocks of sugar that were subsequently cut into cubes.Henry Tate(Tate & Lyle) acquired from Langen exclusive rights for producing the cubes in Britain (on 13 March 1875[7]) and started the first large-scale manufacturing of cubes.[4]Tate placed a very large bet on the innovation, temporarily running through personal financial difficulties to the extent that he had to pull his daughter from the boarding school she attended.[8]The contract with Langen involvedroyalties,but the factory was successful, producing 214 tons of cubes in 1878 and 1,366 tons in 1888.[9]

In 1880 Tate acquired rights to another process, invented in Belgium by Gustav Adant, where sugar "tablets" were manufactured on rotating machines and then sliced into cubes (at the time, they were called "dominoes").[4]The new process had replaced the Langen one in 1891 and was a huge success; standard quotes for refined sugar in London started to be expressed in Tate's cubes.[9]

The first process to mold cubes without any cutting was invented inBostonby Charles H. Hersey ( "Hersey drum",1879); some of these units, modified in 1929 to produce fancy shaped pieces, are still in use today.[4]

Adant's process is also still used, for example, at theRaffinerie Tirlemontoise(since 1902) to make extremely hard cubes popular inBelgium,France,andArab countries.[4]

Use

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Doses of oral polio vaccine being added to sugar cubes for use in a 1967 vaccination campaign inBonn,West Germany

The cubes were and are mostly used to sweeten tea and coffee (the original Rad's pieces were even sold as "tea-sugar"[4]). However, the popularity of artificial sweeteners, together with the trend of switching fromfiltered coffeetocapuccino-like drinks, has turned sugar cubes into a niche product primarily used in bars or served at formalafternoon teaevents.[4][2]

The specialty uses of cubes include:[4]

  • the classicalOld Fashioned cocktailrecipe with a sugar cube infused withAngostura bitters;
  • paraphernalia for serving theabsintheincludes the slottedabsinthe spoonon top of the glass. A sugar cube is placed onto the spoon and a slow drip of water dissolves the sugar into the drink, creating the desired milkyloucheeffect[10](a more bohemian version involves putting the soaked cube aflame[11]);
  • sugar cubes can be infused with a drug, making a calibrated oral delivery simple. This was used both for administering thepolio vaccineand for distribution of drugs likeLSD(leaving the "cube" as a slang term for the latter);[12]
  • a great variety of colored and sculpted sugar cubes (shaped as flowers and animals) is marketed inJapan.[4]

Arts

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A sugar-cubemetaphoris popular in architecture. First proposed byWalter Gropiusin 1922, it comes back "every five years" with a variety of ambiguous meanings, from strictly regimented design (cf. works ofTheo van Doesburg[13]) to "unity in variety"(cf. Italian hill towns)[14]to whitewashed plain facades of theCyclades.[15]

A monument with sugar cube on top stands in Czech town ofDačice,the place where the first sugar cube factory was established by Rad.[6]

Multiple art galleries display the works of an Irish sculptor Brendan Jamison, specializing on the architecture-themed pieces made of sugar cubes.[4]

References

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Sources

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  • Asadi, M. (2006)."Cube Sugar".Beet-Sugar Handbook.Wiley. pp. 454–455.ISBN978-0-471-79098-3.Retrieved1 October2023.
  • Grigorieva, Alexandra (2015). "sugar cubes".The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets.Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/acref/9780199313396.001.0001.ISBN978-0-19-931339-6.
  • Kennedy, Pagan (16 November 2012)."Who Made That Sugar Cube?".The New York Times Magazine.
  • Chalmin, P. (1990)."Thames Refinery and the Cubes".The Making of a Sugar Giant: Tate and Lyle, 1859–1989.Harwood Academic Publishers.ISBN978-3-7186-0434-0.Retrieved1 October2023.
  • Kirschner, Sebastian (2 March 2016)."Die Würfel sind gefallen".Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin(in German). Archived fromthe originalon 5 July 2018.
  • Strang, J.; Arnold, W. N; Peters, T. (18 December 1999)."Absinthe: what's your poison?".BMJ.319(7225): 1590–1592.doi:10.1136/bmj.319.7225.1590.ISSN0959-8138.PMC1127080.PMID10600949.
  • Labrecque, Lauren I.; Warr, Garret M.; Labrecque, Joseph (2016). "Absinthe: An Exploration of the Role of Mythology and Ritual in Market Revival".Celebrating America's Pastimes: Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Marketing?.Developments in Marketing Science: Proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp. 325–328.doi:10.1007/978-3-319-26647-3_67.ISBN978-3-319-26646-6.ISSN2363-6165.
  • Drahoňovská, Lucie Pantazopoulou (2018)."From Round to Square".Fehler.Goethe-Institut.Retrieved2 October2023.
  • Jencks, C. (2002).The New Paradigm in Architecture: The Language of Post-modernism.Yale University Press.ISBN978-0-300-09513-5.Retrieved2 October2023.
  • Hildebrand-Schat, Viola (13 October 2022). "Sugar Cubes That Revolutionized Art: Malevich's Artistic Project as Interpreted by Leonid Tishkov in Kubvechnosti (2012)".The Mediality of Sugar.Brill Publishing.pp. 173–195.doi:10.1163/9789004513686_009.ISBN978-90-04-51368-6.
  • Harbison, Robert (2003)."The avant-garde in twentieth-century architecture".Companion to Contemporary Architectural Thought.Routledge Companion Encyclopedias. Taylor & Francis. pp. 458–461.ISBN978-1-134-98381-0.Retrieved2 October2023.
  • Twardowski, Mariusz (2019)."Santoryn a sprawa architektury nowoczesnej"[Santorini and the modern architecture affair](PDF).Środowisko Mieszkaniowe(in Polish) (28). Uniwersytet Jagiellonski – Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellonskiego: 60–71.doi:10.4467/25438700sm.19.031.11368.ISSN1731-2442.S2CID213734448.
  • Kaysers, Harry; Schweck, Hubert; Delavier, Hans-Joachim (1998). "Special crystal sugar products. Cube sugar, nib sugar and loaf sugar". In van der Poel, Pieter; Schieweck, Hubert M.; Schwartz, Thomas K. (eds.).Sugar Technology. Beet and Sugar Cane Manufacture.Berlin: Verlag Dr. Albert Bartens KG. pp. 962–964.ISBN3-87040-065-X.