“By certain artificial devices this same change of starch into sugar can be brought about. The simplest of these devices is the application of heat, which always enters into the preparation of farinaceous food. Let us take a few examples. A raw potato is uneatable. Boiled in water or roasted in the ashes, it is excellent. What has happened, then? Heat has converted a part of the starch into sugar, and the tuber has become a sugary farinaceous paste. The same can be said of the chestnut. Raw, it is no great delicacy, although at a pinch it can be eaten; cooked, it is worthy of all the praise we can give it. I appeal to you to back me up in this assertion. Here, then, we have another transformation of starch into sugar by the action of heat. Beans, peas, both as hard as bullets in the dry state and of no agreeable flavor, are unmistakably sweetened by being boiled in water and having their starch acted on by heat. Our various farinaceous foods behave in the same way. Ingenuity brings into play a more powerful agent than heat alone to convert the starch into sugar. It is boiled in water and during the boiling a little sulphuric acid or oil of vitriol is added. Under the influence of this energetic fluid the starch is changed into a sugary syrup. It is of course to be understood that this syrup, as soon as it has been thus produced, is separated from the oil of vitriol which has served to make it. “The sugar thus obtained is a soft, sticky substance, and almost as sweet as honey, but very different from ordinary sugar, which is solid and comes in beautiful white loaves. [3] It is called starch-sugar or glucose. Confectioners use it a great deal. When you crunch a sugar-plum—and I am persuaded that you do not underestimate the excellence of sugar-plums—do you know what you are eating? A composition of starch and starch-sugar. I pass over the almond in the center; that is beside the question.” “Do you mean to say,” demanded Jules, “that a bag of sugar-plums comes from such stuff as potatoes and oil of vitriol?” “Such is undoubtedly the origin of the delicious sugar-plum,” was the reply; “and indeed many of the delicacies of the pastry-cook, of the confectioner, and of the manufacturer of refreshing beverages, which you believe to be sweetened with ordinary sugar, really owe their sweet taste to syrup made from starch—a much cheaper product than sugar. You see the potato furnishes something else besides the modest dishes with which it supplies our table.