This is the Wales Sugar Estate factory, near Georgetown, Guyana. The smell of boiling sugar cane is overwhelming, and – in the short term – delicious. One of the by-products, bubbling away, is molasses.
This is the Wales Sugar Estate factory, near Georgetown, Guyana. The smell of boiling sugar cane is overwhelming, and – in the short term – delicious. One of the by-products, bubbling away, is molasses.
For hundreds of years, molasses left Guyana in barrels, and headed for Newfoundland and Labrador (where it was exchanged for dried fish). There, Guyanese molasses was sold in 'puncheons', or small barrels, and was a staple of the fisherman's winter diet. In the isolated outports, in the days before resupply, refrigeration or preservatives, it was indeed an essential part of that diet.
My great grandfather, Dr Curwen, reports on a typical, large, poor family in 1893: 'By October they had already started their winter diet (4 barrels of flour, 1½ 1bs of tea and 8 gallons of molasses), which has to last until July …'
Needless to say, this diet caused terrible medical problems, not least constipation (to add to other woes, including beri-beri and devastating bouts of influenza). But, despite this, molasses is still a treat in Labrador, with little cakes that smell just like the Wales factory, near Georgetown.
