7 myths about sugar in cooking and baking

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Few ingredients are as loved, loathed and feared as sugar. We adore it for its starring role in many of our favorite desserts. We are skeptical of the way it sneaks into foods where we least expect it. A recipe’s success may hinge on what type and how much sugar you use, whether it’s the many tablespoons needed to cream butter and sugar or the pinch that makes a savory dish taste just right.

Is it any wonder that sugar, along with salt, is among the ingredients most likely to raise our collective hackles and confusion?

As someone who’s written, tested and edited recipes for years, I have been on the receiving end of nearly every question and criticism you can imagine about cooking and baking with sugar. Many are rooted in misconceptions about what exactly sugar does – or doesn’t do – in food. Others revolve around the dizzying number of options available at the grocery store.

A lot of the dialogue and disagreement has to do with health, and with good reason. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 60 percent of Americans ages 2 and older exceed the recommendation that no more than 10 percent of your daily calories should come from added sugars. And we know that weight gain, obesity, Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and tooth decay are among the health risks associated with excessive sugar consumption.

As I’ve previously done with salt and baking in general, I’m tackling some of the most persistent myths to help you understand sugar, particularly as it relates to cooking and baking, so you are equipped to use it better and smarter, and when it really matters.

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1. The only flavor sugar offers is sweetness

Eat sugar on its own, before cooking, and the primary flavor you get is sweetness. But once it’s heated and combined with other ingredients, some pretty neat things start to happen. When sugar interacts with the amino acids of proteins, starting around 300 degrees, you get the browning reaction known as Maillard, which creates new flavors and aroma compounds, with several hundred possibilities. Maillard occurs in foods with inherent sugar or in recipes where it’s added. In recipes where natural or added sugars caramelize, beginning at 320 degrees, you will get a range of complex flavors, including toasty, nutty and even pleasantly bitter.

Sugar can also enhance other flavors, though the mechanics remain somewhat of a mystery. Paul Wise and Danielle Reed of the Monell Chemical Senses Center told me sugar may partially activate the umami taste, the mouth-filling savory, satisfying sensation often associated with ingredients such as MSG, soy sauce, tomato paste and more. Wise says sugar may be “tickling secondary mechanisms” in the tongue’s taste cells that mimic mechanisms in the gut, sending additional signals to our brain. There’s also a possibility that even subtle sweetness can enhance aromas, in part because of the learned association between the way certain foods smell and taste, Wise says.

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2. Reducing sugar won’t affect a recipe

Especially in baking, sugar affects much more than how the food tastes. Because it attracts water, sugar helps baked goods retain and maintain moisture. You also need sufficient sugar for creaming, which creates a matrix of butter and sugar that traps air. Cutting back the sugar lessens the ability to get that air and, therefore, properly risen baked goods, often aided by chemical leaveners (baking soda or powder). In addition to a denser result, you may also end up with a greasier mouthfeel. Reducing sugar in bread dough can take away the source of food for the yeast and may slow down or impede the rise.

When water combines with the protein found in flour, you get gluten, which helps provide structure and chew to baked goods. But sometimes you don’t want that, or at least too much of that, which is where sugar’s water-attracting skills contribute to tenderness. Remove too much sugar from your recipe and you may end up with drier, tougher cookies and cakes.

If you want to bake with less sugar, try starting with small reductions. Or, better yet, seek out recipes developed to use less refined sugar, rely on natural sweeteners or employ sugar alternatives.

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3. Sugars and other sweeteners are interchangeable in recipes

This one goes hand-in-hand with the last myth. Any time you begin changing ingredients, you risk making fundamental, and problematic, alterations to the recipe. Not all sugars are created equal. They vary in moisture, texture, sweetness, weight and volume. Often, they cannot be swapped out one-for-one, and substitutions may require making other adaptations to account for the differences. I’ve written about the exact substitutions before, which I encourage you to read, so I’ll just point out a few potential pitfalls based on my experience with reader questions. Corn syrup tends to be a particular sticking point (if you’ll excuse the pun). Remember that bottled corn syrup, such as Karo, is not the same as high-fructose corn syrup. Regular corn syrup is less refined than high-fructose and is only 30 to 50 percent as sweet as table, or granulated, sugar, Harold McGee says in “On Food and Cooking.” Using something like honey instead will be much sweeter, especially as honey is even sweeter than granulated sugar, by anywhere from 25 to 50 percent, McGee says. Speaking of, using honey is another one of those circumstances where you cannot make a simple one-for-one replacement. If you use it instead of granulated sugar, you’ll need to use less and also reduce the liquid in the recipe.

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4. Brown sugar is less refined than granulated sugar

We’ve been trained to assume that brown things are better for us and the environment, whether we’re talking about rice, paper bags or whole-wheat flour. But brown sugar? Nope. The light or dark brown sugar (not raw, demerara or turbinado) we typically buy for baking these days is simply granulated (white) sugar combined with molasses. The molasses may provide a small amount of beneficial nutrients, but certainly not enough to classify it as a health food or as a more nutritious alternative to other sugars, says registered dietitian nutritionist and cookbook author Ellie Krieger, who writes our weekly Nourish column.

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5. Cooking with sugar is uniquely American

There are certain responses I’ve come to expect when publishing recipes, and I can almost guarantee that whenever a recipe – particularly a savory one – calls for sugar or another sweetener, someone will lambaste us for it. The comments generally fall along the lines of: “This is what’s wrong with Americans! They put sugar in everything!” Well, I’m here to tell you the use of sugar is by no means limited to the United States. Cuisines around the world use sugar in savory dishes in amounts big and small. Witness Vietnamese cá kho tộ, or caramelized braised fish. There’s Italian agrodolce, a sweet and sour condiment that may contain honey or granulated sugar. Spanish berenjenas con miel is fried eggplant drizzled with honey. Moroccan bistilla, a chicken pie, receives a final dusting of confectioners’ sugar. And those are just a few examples. Regardless of the country of origin, these kinds of dishes show how sugar can mask bitterness, balance acidity or spice, create new flavors through caramelization, and enhance what might otherwise be mild ingredients.

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6. Some added sugars are healthier than others

While people have various reasons for seeking out sugars they think are better for them, the bottom line is that added sugar is added sugar. Honey, molasses and maple syrup are less refined and may contain some minerals, but the overall goal is to reduce and limit the amount of added sugar in our diets, regardless of source, Krieger says. The American Heart Association recommends that men consume no more than 9 teaspoons/36 grams/150 calories of added sugar a day; for women, it’s 6 teaspoons/25 grams/100 calories. Where the type of sugar is most impactful is the glycemic index (GI), which measures how much of a rise in blood sugar you get after eating a food; depending on which scale you use, the benchmark food with a score of 100 is either pure glucose or white bread. These numbers are especially important for people with diabetes or insulin resistance. On the scale compared to glucose, the GI of granulated sugar (sucrose) is around 65, maple syrup and molasses 55 and honey 50 (though it can vary somewhat by variety).

Krieger warns against worrying about the inherent sugars in fruit, which are naturally packaged with fiber, water and antioxidants. “That makes a difference because it changes the way your body absorbs it.” She says the inherent sugars in dairy, such as milk and yogurt (avoid sweetened varieties), are not on par with added sugars either.

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7. You can only be healthy if you never add sugar to a recipe

For most of us, it’s not necessary or feasible to avoid sugar entirely. “This idea of all or nothing,” Krieger says, “we wind up being in this trap.” Will a little honey to emulsify and bring balance to a salad dressing encourage you to eat more salad or vegetables? Go for it. Does baking and sharing cookies once in a while bring you joy? It’s okay! Choosing to decrease rather than eliminate sugar in your diet may set you up for sustained success in the long run, reducing the likelihood of the guilt or shame spiral should you fail at “zero.” As always, consult with a professional for any specific needs or concerns, but also know that you can still achieve a well-balanced, nutritious diet even if you sometimes cook and bake with sugar.