Yesterday, I was watching Cooking Time (wacky Korean
language cooking show with English subtitles), and
as usual the older lady was adding "oligosaccharide"
to the food with the wild abandon normally reserved
for tannis root. But this time was different because
the young guy who is her co-host asked her why she
was adding it, because they had already added sugar.
That's a question I have been having all along.

It was a fried fish dish, and she said it would help
the fish hold together. This seemed almost a non-
answer, because she uses it in a lot of stuff that
doesn't have fish in it. She added it as a clear
liquid that appeared a bit syrupy. I know quite a bit
about food additives, and I don't know what this one is.
"Oligosaccharide" only means a small number of linked
sugar molecules. Technically, I suppose you could
call sucrose an oligosaccharide, but it's usually
called a disaccharide because it has only two simple
sugar units. An oligosaccharide should have three or
more, but beyond that I don't know what that stuff the
Korean woman is using.

Anyone familiar with the Korean oligosaccharide?