Processed
Dextrose
S tier
Dextrose is crystalline D-glucose, the same sugar blood chemistry uses, sold as a fine white powder or small crystal. It is about 70% as sweet as sucrose, browns eagerly, and is the curing-room favourite for feeding a ferment without a huge sweet hit. Sausage makers, ice-cream plants, and sports tablets all reach for it. It is hygroscopic and it will not cream like sucrose. In a meringue it behaves badly; in a dry-cure mix it is almost irreplaceable. Do not confuse the word "glucose" on a UK glucose-syrup tin with this dry crystal. Dextrose monohydrate is the usual food form.
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Characteristics
Preparations
Traits
History
Kirchhoff's starch hydrolysis pointed toward commercial dextrose, later crystallised at scale.
Corn-wet-milling made dextrose a cheap crystalline food sugar.
Curing rooms standardised dextrose as the fermentable in dry sausage.
Sports gels and ice-cream labels listed dextrose by name rather than "glucose powder."