Sweeteners from Cane Blocks to Laboratory Powders

Piloncillo is cane juice boiled down and molded into blocks, in Mexico usually small cones, and the page notes it has been used there for at least 500 years. Start here to see sweetness in its least processed form, a cousin of South Asian jaggery.

Rock sugar grows as large crystals when a sugar and water solution is left to crystallize slowly, often on a string or stick, over about six to seven days. Islamic writers of the ninth century were among the first to document candy sugar made this way.

Barley malt syrup comes from sprouted, malted barley and is roughly half as sweet as white sugar. The page records it as a primary sweetener alongside honey in China from around 1000 BCE to 1000 CE, with extraction described in the sixth-century Qimin Yaoshu.

Barley sugar is a hard candy that was historically made by boiling sugar with barley water. Heated to around 160 degrees Celsius it sets with a crystallized surface, and at about 185 degrees it cools into a clear, viscous candy.

Golden syrup is an inverted sugar syrup refined from cane or beet juice. It was formulated by Charles and John Joseph Eastick at the Abram Lyle and Sons refinery in London and went into commercial tins from 1885.

Lactose is the main sugar of milk, about two to eight percent of milk by mass, yet only about 0.2 to 0.4 as sweet as table sugar. It shows a sweetener that works more as a bulking agent in infant formula and tablets than as a flavor.

Aspartame is roughly 200 times sweeter than sucrose and was discovered by accident in December 1965 by chemist James Schlatter at G.D. Searle. The United States FDA approved it in 1974, briefly revoked that, and reapproved it in 1981.

Acesulfame potassium, code E950, is also about 200 times sweeter than sucrose and was found by accident in 1967 by Karl Clauss at Hoechst. Unlike aspartame it stays stable under heat, which suits it to baking and long-shelf-life products.