Let’s say we have 4 sugar beets and we want to use them for cooking sweet things. Here’s a quick(ish) rundown on a couple of possibilities. Water and power use omitted to keep things concise(ish). There are more ways to make sugar from fruits but this is just to evaluate dem beets.
Make Beet Syrup;
Recipe x1
4 beets = 7 syrup
Syrup per beet = 1.75
Total Time = 20 mins
Time per Syrup ~ 2.86 mins
Make Sugar;
Recipe x2
4 beets = 16 sugar
Sugar per Beet = 4
Total Lye used = 40
Lye per Sugar = 2.5
Total Time = 180 mins
Time per Sugar = 11.25 mins
Make Beet Syrup into Sugar;
Recipe x1.75
7 Beet Syrup = 14 Sugar
Sugar per beet = 3.5
Total Lye used = 87.5
Lye per Sugar = 6.25
Total Cumulative Time = 42 + 20 = 62 mins
Cumulative Time per Sugar ~ 4.43 mins
What we can see so far;
- Making sugar directly as opposed to beet syrup reaps ~2.3 times more sweetener while taking ~3.9 times longer to make
- First making syrup and then refining it into sugar loses you 0.5 sugar per beet. However you spend only 40% of the time compared to the direct recipe while spending 2.5x the lye.
In food recipes where both sugar and syrup may be used as sweetener both are interchangeable 1/1. The foods that have health >0 are the following (u-nits used per portion, n-utrition, q-uench, h-ealth, f-un)
- Granola; 0.5u 32n -2q 1h 3f (doesn’t spoil)
- Vegetarian Baked Beans; 0.25u n39 q0 1h 4f
- Deluxe Cooked Oatmeal; 0.5u 32n 0q 1h 3f
One a personal note, since I found oat seeds pretty quickly and oatmeal doesn’t spoil (as opposed to fresh veggies and fruits) I found that Deluxe Oatmeal was the best overall recipe for me. If Granola wouldn’t need an additional fresh fruit or candy sweetener it would be Granola since it doesn’t spoil.
Anywho, hope this benefits someone else who is wondering. I just thought I’d throw it out there since I did the math on it for myself anyway.