In article >,
Sqwertz > wrote:

> On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 20:09:17 -0500, BigBadBubba wrote:
>
> > Just to specify, that would be plain old corn syrup, not to be confused in
> > any way with HFCS (high fructose corn syrup), which is a completely
> > different thing.

They shouldn't be used as substitutes for each other, if that's what you
mean, unless you know what you are doing. On the other hand, they
aren't completely different, either. HFCS is made from CS.

In the beginning there was corn. It could be used for many things.
People wanted more things, though. You can grind up dry corn and
extract the starch. Then add water and a common enzyme. This broke the
starch down into its constituent glucose, a type of sugar that isn't as
sweet as normal sugar (sucrose). Thus was born corn syrup. This was
great stuff, but not such a great sweetener. So new enzymes were
developed. These converted the glucose into fructose (fruit sugar),
which is sweeter than sucrose. There are various types of HFCS, based
on how much glucose and fructose are mixed in.

> Corn syrup is a very common cooking ingredient that was around long
> before HFCS. Which I don't think you can even buy retail, can you?

I've never seen HFCS for sale. It used to be that if you cruised the
Karo site, some of the products had HFCS as an ingredient. I think last
time I looked, that's no longer true.

> Corn Syrup is more commonly known as "Karo Syrup". Anybody who has
> a pantry that hasn't been purged for 20 years has a bottle of this.

Karo is the brand name for corn syrup sold in the US.

Note that HFCS is only cheaper than sugar when corn is heavily
subsidized, and heavy tariffs and trade restrictions make regular sugar
(sucrose) more expensive than the free world trade price. Both of these
are true in the US. Thus, much HFCS is used as a sweetener in the US,
but not in the rest of the world.

--
Dan Abel
Petaluma, California USA