In China and especially in India the production of cane-sugar is ancient. Sugar was called sarkara in the ancient Sanskrit language. The Arabs turned this into sucar. The Greeks called it saccraron and today we have sucre in French, zucchero in Italian, azucar in Spanish and sakhar in Russian.

The Egyptians during the Middle Ages had already development a sugar industry. But the real story of this product begins with the introduction of the sugar-cane to America after the discovery of that continent in 1492. Christopher Columbus took the first specimen plants over from the Canary Islands to the Antilles in the West Indies where the plant found perfect conditions for growth.

To extract the sugar the cane had to be crushed between iron rollers. The juice was heated several times and refined by adding lime to it. It was then passed from pan to pan and boiled until it turned into a sort of paste. This paste was then cooled in cone shaped vats.