Artificial Honey

What you need

  • Sugar
  • Citric acid
  • A hotplate or cooker
  • Various beakers and dishes for heating, dissolving and crystallising the sugar.
  • A stirring rod and thermometer
  • Natural honey
  • Corn flour
    Iodine solution

What you do

The instructions for this experiment require materials which are difficult to find in the UK. The following instructions approximate the materials and procedure shown in the video. If you have success using these notes or have an alternative procedure please let us know using the comments page.

  1. Dissolve 100 grams sugar in 100ml of distilled water and pour into a dish. Add 0.1g of citric acid (you'll need to look at the strength of acid if you are using a solution) and heat the whole thing for an hour. Take it off the heat and let it cool.
  2. Have a look in your dish and you should have something which looks very like honey.
  3. If you accidentally get your real honey and your fake honey mixed up you can then test to work out which is which.
  4. Make a very weak solution of corn flour and water - you may need to experiment with different quantities that work well with the honey you have. Put 20ml of each of the 'honeys' in two beakers and add 10 ml of corn flour solution to each, and then make each up to 100ml with some more water. Warm each solution gently, to no higher than 40 degrees Celsius for 60 minutes.
  5. An alternative, if you can find it is 20ml of honey, 60 ml of water and 5ml of Dr Oetker's Whip It, a whipped cream stabiliser made of dextrose and modified corn starch:
  6. http://www.oetker.ca/en/product/baking-ingredients/pouch/11140
  7. Again, warm at 40C for an hour.
  8. Then add some drops of iodine solution and stir. The real honey will remain honey coloured, whilst the fake honey turns blue.

What's going on?

Natural honey is mainly made from 'invert sugar', where the sucrose molecule is broken into its glucose and fructose components. A small amount of acid (citric, ascorbic or even just lemon juice) helps break down the table sugar in the experiment in this way. Invert sugar doesn't crystallise as easily as table sugar, so it is more often used in a cooking when a pure syrup is required.

When it comes to telling which is which, natural honey contains the enzyme amylase along with a lot of other enzymes. When starch (in the corn flour) is added, and the water / honey / starch mixture is left at the optimal temperature, the amylase rapidly breaks down the starch into sugar. There is no such enzyme in the artificial honey, so the starch shows up as a positive iodine test for starch. If you over-heat the test the amylase will become denatured and stop working, so make sure you keep the solutions around body temperature.

Special Safety advice

Be careful when heating the sugar as it can get very hot. Do not taste your artificial honey unless you have used food grade materials and the appropriate cooking equipment, and DO NOT consume after you have finished the iodine test.