Molasses: Who Knew?

I recently wrote my latest installment of Borderline Good, and in it I mention molasses. Don’t worry if you haven’t read it yet I won’t spoil anything. When writing the story, I realized how little I knew about molasses, other than that it is in most of my favourite cookies. The first thing I learned is that in the UK molasses is known as treacle.

The origin of molasses is mostly unknown other than it was used in what is now India as early as 500 BC. The term molasses originally comes from the Portuguese word melaço that was taken from the Latin word mel, for honey.

Before World War one molasses was the most used sweetener in the world. After the war though refined sugar was readily available and was a cheaper alternative to molasses. With this came an increased demand for refined sugar and little to no demand for molasses. But molasses had started to lose its value as a world commodity some years before the war.

No longer the other Black Gold

In a publication by The Louisiana Bulletin #394, Bray, Charles Iseard, “Feeding blackstrap molasses to fattening steers” (1945), Bray included this quote that originally had been printed in the Country Gentlemen and then reprinted in the Louisiana Planter in 1895 on how molasses had lost much of its value “Throughout the sugar districts of Louisiana molasses is emptied into the streams and skimming ditches to get rid of it, being of such little value it does not pay to barrel it for transportation. Molasses is worth in New Orleans l½¢ to 2¢ per gallon. Thousands upon thousands of barrels of molasses are now wasted.”

This lack of value for molasses was the reason sugar cane growers started a campaign to have Texas cattlemen start feeding molasses to their livestock to fatten them up. It was proven at the time to add weight to cattle at a much faster rate than corn feeding and at a substantially lower price. Molasses had been fed to livestock for hundreds of years before this and it is still practiced to this day.

I didn’t have the slightest Ink-ling

I am embarrassed to admit that although I was a printer in both newspaper and commercial print shops for close to 30 years, I had no idea that the first ink rollers that were used on printing presses were made from molasses. Before these rollers, pressmen would need to apply ink to the lead type with ink balls, which were leather bags filled with wool. These ink balls were used to pick up ink out of a large ink well and then pound the ink onto the lead type. The new Composition Roller made from a mix of molasses and glue drastically sped up the printing process, even in the days when the rollers were still used by hand. The term composition roller was likely a mix of the fact that rollers were made up of a composition of ingredients and they were first used in newspaper composing rooms. Presses in England first started to use composition rollers in 1818, right during the heart of the industrial revolution. Once these new ink rollers were automated to pick up and apply ink to the lead type, the presses really took off, likely printing as many as 600 pages an hour. Today web presses can print 70,000 copies an hour or more. Newer sheetfed presses can print up to 18,000 sheets an hour.

Molasses’s slow return

It took a few years, but molasses is once again in high demand. Besides it use for making rum, it can also be used to make industrial alcohol such as denatured alcohol that is used in shellac wood finishes.

In the commercial food industry molasses has many uses. Blackstrap molasses is used in organic foods as a natural colourant in place of caramel colour. Most barbeque sauces contain molasses, along with Beef jerky, soy sauce, dark rye bread and gingerbread, just to name a few of its uses. Molasses is also commonly used in processed foods where the flavour of the molasses can add to the overall taste of the product. Corn syrup is still the most used sweetener in processed food, but unlike molasses, corn syrup is almost flavourless.

Household use of molasses had slightly declined over the years until the “true barbeque” fad and more recently the Covid 19 pandemic, and more households were cooking at home and trying recipes they hadn’t before. Molasses used to be a household staple for making cookies and bread

by Kirby Gust of Kirby’s Korner

or topping for porridge. Not a lot of the younger generation make homemade baked beans like their mothers and grandmothers used to.

Molasses’s dark history

Unfortunately, molasses was a driving factor in early North American slavery, often referred to as the “triangle trade in rum”. Molasses was produced in the Caribbean or on southern plantations and then shipped to New England where it was made into rum. This rum was then shipped overseas to the coast of Africa where the rum was traded for black slaves. The slaves were then taken back to either the Caribbean or the US south and traded for money and/or more molasses. These poor African people were then forced to work in the sugar cane fields and on plantations to make more molasses. This molasses was shipped to New England and the whole vicious and inhumane cycle started all over again.

The market collapse of molasses stocks was not the only collapse in its history. On January 15, 1919, The Great Molasses Flood disaster occurred in Boston’s North End. Around noon of that day, a giant metal tank holding millions of gallons of molasses burst open and started a molasses tsunami that killed 21 people and injured 150 more. On this, unusually warm day in January the flowing molasses reached speeds of up to 35 miles (56Km) an hour as it flowed out and away from the tank. The thick molasses trapped people as they tried to escape and toppled buildings in nearby neighbourhoods, trapping people not only inside the collapsed building but also in a foot of molasses. The molasses spread out for over two and a half city blocks before the weather took a dramatic turn to below freezing temperatures later that night causing the molasses to thicken, making rescue efforts even harder than they had already been. It was said that the smell of spilled molasses lingered in the area for two decades.

The Iconic Crosby’s Molasses (Canada’s Molasses)

In the late 1870s, Lorenzo George Crosby founded Crosby’s in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. In 1897 Crosby moved his growing company to Saint John, New Brunswick. By 1911 the business had grown substantially and was moved to a bigger manufacturing plant where the company remains to this Day. Crosby’s is still owned by the same family and is now in its fifth generation of ownership. Crosby’s makes both fancy and blackstrap molasses along with cooking molasses which is a blend of the two. According to Crosby’s website, Fancy molasses is made from pure singlesource sugarcane juice and is not a by-product of the sugar refining process. Whereas blackstrap molasses is a highly concentrated, final by-product of the sugar refining process, leaving it very dark and robust, with a somewhat bitter flavour. All of Crosby’s online recipes use fancy molasses.

We always have a carton or two of molasses in our pantry. Mostly because I love the stuff. My favourite cookies are molasses cookies even though I’m not a huge fan of gingerbread, most likely because gingerbread usually doesn’t have enough molasses in it for my liking. I also love homemade baked beans, heavy on the molasses.

A few years ago, I was watching a television program called Justified. In one episode they were having Shoo-Fly Pie. I found the recipe online and Colleen made it for me. It is basically just a custard pie made with molasses instead of sugar. It sure was good (hint, hint, if you are reading this Colleen) The shoo-fly part of its name is from a brand of molasses that was popular in the American south in the 19th century.

If we were not working fast enough on the farm as kids, Dad would always say we were “slower than molasses in January” a saying that likely makes little sense to a younger generation that has never lived in a house without central heat. Mind you they have likely never seen molasses flow out of the carton, even when it was warm.

Kirby Gust is a self-taught crocheter, gardener and woodworker. He has been designing both furniture and afghan crochet patterns for over 20 years. Kirby and Colleen Gust are publishers of the Manitoba & Saskatchewan Country Register. Kirby is the author of Borderline Good and Kirby’s Korner that appear in their publications of the Country Register. Kirby’s woodworking can be seen on both Facebook and Instagram under the name, The White City Woodworker.

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