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All,

I'm researching a substitute for fructose-bearing table sugar. Glucose is potentially interesting from a health standpoint. Glucose is only 70% as sweet as table sugar (sucrose) which is a mix of glucose and fructose, so one tradeoff is to use a larger quantity or resolve to a less sweet taste.

What are the other tradeoffs when using glucose instead of table sugar? Does it caramelize the same? Does it bake the same?

Thanks!

JDelage

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Table sugar, ie sucrose, is not "a mixture of glucose and fructose", but rather a disaccharide made by combining one molecule of glucose with one of fructose. In the body, the sucrose is metabolised into glucose and fructose; the fructose is further modified into glucose. I'm sure that you don't want to know about the tricarboxylic acid cycle which is how the glucose gets turned into carbon dioxide, water and energy as you are interested in the physical aspects.

Using a larger quantity of glucose (as opposed to sucrose) causes the proportions of all the ingredients to change, causing a change in taste and consistency - in the same way that diabetic foods, using sorbitol, have different consistencies.

Glucose is probably more reactive than sucrose in terms of the Maillard reaction (browning).

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  • I thought fructose browned better than sucrose?
    – Enigmativity
    Aug 31 '12 at 0:15
  • @Enigmativity: In general, smaller sugars like fructose and glucose react with amino acids in the Maillard reaction faster than larger sugars like sucrose; pentose sugars (5 carbon atoms), such as ribose, will react faster than hexose sugars, like glucose and fructose, and disaccharides, such as sucrose and lactose.
    – Didgeridrew
    Oct 23 '14 at 9:27

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