Sucaryl Recipe Book

Today's featured booklet, Calorie Saving Recipes with Sucaryl (undated, 32 pages) was chosen primarily because it includes illustrations of the product on the rear cover.

Regular readers of this blog already know that I have an unusual (and somewhat useless) preoccupation with documenting the food packaging of the past. I mean, if you can't find a picture of an old cheese package on the internet, it's not going to be the end of the world, but just in case someone does want to see that, why not do my part to make sure it's there? After all, aren't we supposed to be able to see everything on the internet? It frustrates me when we can't.

Sucaryl, one of the brand names for the artificial sweetener Cyclamate, was banned in the U.S. in 1969, although it's still sold in some other countries today. At the time of publication, it was made by Abbot Laboratories in Chicago, IL. Fine print in the booklet describes it as a sweetening agent containing cyclamate and saccharin.

During the late 1950s and the 1960s, if you were on a "reducing diet," or happened to be a diabetic who was instructed to avoid sugar by the doctor, you might have been familiar with Sucaryl.

Sucaryl was available in a liquid form, a tablet form and also as a powder. I think I remember seeing bottles of the little tablets around my aunt's house when I was a child.

The liquid Sucaryl came in a 4-ounce bottle and an Economy Size one-pint bottle. The booklet says it was ideal for cooking, sweetening beverages, even suitable for use in canning and freezing foods.


The tablets came in both 100-count bottles and the Economy Size, which held 1,000 tablets. You got a pocket-sized carrying bottle when you purchased the larger quantity bottle. Tablets could be used in cooking and for sweetening beverages.


The sweetening powder came in a 2-ounce bottle with a special sprinkling cap and the booklet says it was good for sprinkling on cereals and fruits.


There are recipes for beverages, breads and muffins, cakes, cookies, desserts, preserved foods, salads and salad dressings. The recipe instructions give teaspoon measurements for the liquid, or alternately, the number of tablets needed. The tablets needed to be crushed before adding them in with the other ingredients. That sounds like a hassle, crushing all those little tablets. The Apricot Upside Down Cake calls for 12 tablets, the Orange Salad Dressing calls for 16 tablets and the Cranberry Gel calls for a whopping 32 tablets.

Each recipe also shows the contents of each serving in an abbreviated code. For example: P 1; F 0.6; C 1.6. The letters translated as P = Protein, F = Fat, C = Carbohydrates. The number showed the weight in grams. The calorie count was also given.


This is one more recipe booklet to add to the growing pile of those containing recipes calling for discontinued products.