Actually, I just checked the dictionary (why I didn’t do that before, I couldn’t tell you), and treacle is in fact the same as molasses…just British English terminology.
Problem solved then.
No treacle is different from molasses. Treacle is a heavier version of golden syrup. You start of with high sucrose and hydrolyse to the invert sugars with invertase or an acid.
Molasses is different - it is just the left over from refining that you can’t do much else with other than baste ham or feed to stock.
In fact:
No**,** treacle is different from molasses.
I’ve tasted both (in the UK and US), but not side-by-side. From my recollection, they taste the same. Golden syrup, however, is different.
Reading further, it sounds to me like you’re thinking of blackstrap molasses:
We don’t use this in cooking, and when people say molasses in the US, they are referring to dark molasses, or what you guys call treacle.
You can stir it up into a glass of milk.
Yummy.
I suppose if you unleashed lots and lots of milk with molasses stirred into it all at once, you could drown a few people, too.
Well either British treacle is different in Britain than Australia or that cite it wrong or I am wrong. Let’s discount case 3.
Your cite is saying that British treacle is a lighter version of molasses. In Australia treacle is a heavier version of golden syrup.
However, it looks like molasses is molasses where ever you are.
Death by molasses? Do dreams where you get stuck in the middle of the street while a bus is careening toward you count? I used to have them all the time.
I am willing to beleive that there was a Molasses Flood that killed a score of dudes. But having one in Boston (1915), another in Missisipi (1932) and yet another back in Boston (1919) all of which killed exactly 21 guys… this strains my credulity. :eek: :dubious:
No. It’s saying that light treacle is golden syrup, and dark treacle/black treacle is what Americans call molasses. All the sites I’ve found say that treacle is equivalent to molasses, and the treacle I’ve had is as dark as its American counterpart and tastes pretty much the same. (Americans do not have a product called treacle – at least not in anything resembling popular use.) Perhaps there is a minute difference, but I can’t figure out what it is, and the cooking sites and dictionaries seem to agree with me. For all practical purposes, they are one and the same.
But if there is a difference, I would like to know.
OK. First, they are saying here that golden syrup and treacle and molasses and blackstrap molasses are all remnants of the boiling and crystallisation process. There are several iteration of which give a progressively heavier syrup.
Now go back and re-read my earlier post:
I am saying that golden syrup and treacle are made by inverting sucrose syrups and cooking them up a bit - in Australia anyway.
That is the difference.
I can’t speak for how it is done elsewhere in the world.
Gotcha… I missed that post.
From looking further, it also seems that what’s known as molasses in Australia is different than what’s commonly known as molasses in the US. Actually, I didn’t even know molasses existed in the British-English speaking world until this thread.
It’s just a great big learn-fest isn’t it?
I have always wondered what Treacle was and have always forgotten to look it up. I always thought it was a made up thing, something to do with sorcery or something. Fire, brimstone, treacle. I am a moran, what can I say.
Back to the OP.
[gingerbread man]
Do you know the muffin man?
[/gingerbread man]
To the best of my knowledge, there was no 1915 Boston molasses flood. The flood occurred January 15, 1919
I think that URL deserves the award for most copy-linked site in a thread 
My mistake, I typed 1915 instead of 1919, probably my eye lingered on the Jan 15 date.
Ahhh, they’re 1910’s-style “Death Floods”.