Juice, as far as I know, does not tend to have sugar added to it. Where have you seen this?
The history of American ketchup, and the chain of events that led to it ending up with the ingredients that it has—including its sugar content—is fascinating, in fact. (As usual, it’s as much a story of technology, economics, and regulatory politics as it is of culinary art.)
As for chocolate: cocoa butter and vanilla are not sweet. (And chocolate-containing foods definitely need not include vanilla!)
Furthermore, chocolate tends to be labeled “bittersweet” (and not just “bitter”), as well as “semi-sweet” for a reason. There are also different grades of it. “Unsweetened” chocolate exists as well, and is available here along with the other sorts.
All of these forms of chocolate have their distinct culinary uses; they are not seamlessly replaceable with one another. You can do substitutions, but only to an extent; and recipe adjustments are needed in such cases.
One thing that few people realize (and this applies to much more than just chocolate) is that sugar plays a greater role in baking chemistry than merely providing the gustatory experience of sweetness; it also affects texture, rise, moistness, etc. In the case of almost all baked goods, you cannot simply adjust the amount of chocolate without changing more than just how sweet the final product is. (Even baking times may be affected by sugar content!)
And even in dishes where I would add sugar (or rather, sweetener) myself, the sheer quantity in American dishes is baffling to me. Be it lemonade or cake or cookies, I find American dishes almost sickly sweet.
This is very true.
I once got an American baking book, and eventually realised I loved all the recipes if I literally halved the sugar, but found them inedible beforehand.
This varies considerably between cookbook authors. (I have noted in particular that, e.g., Stella Parks tends to overload her recipes with sugar—indeed, often ending up with double what I’d find reasonable—while Christopher Kimball’s recipes have sugar amounts that tend to be almost exactly what I’d find ideal. I suspect this has something to do with their backgrounds—Parks is from Kentucky, while Kimball is from New York / Vermont—and hints at a general pattern of regional variation, within the United States, in how much sugar tends to be added to foods of all sorts.)
Juice, as far as I know, does not tend to have sugar added to it. Where have you seen this?
The history of American ketchup, and the chain of events that led to it ending up with the ingredients that it has—including its sugar content—is fascinating, in fact. (As usual, it’s as much a story of technology, economics, and regulatory politics as it is of culinary art.)
As for chocolate: cocoa butter and vanilla are not sweet. (And chocolate-containing foods definitely need not include vanilla!)
Furthermore, chocolate tends to be labeled “bittersweet” (and not just “bitter”), as well as “semi-sweet” for a reason. There are also different grades of it. “Unsweetened” chocolate exists as well, and is available here along with the other sorts.
All of these forms of chocolate have their distinct culinary uses; they are not seamlessly replaceable with one another. You can do substitutions, but only to an extent; and recipe adjustments are needed in such cases.
One thing that few people realize (and this applies to much more than just chocolate) is that sugar plays a greater role in baking chemistry than merely providing the gustatory experience of sweetness; it also affects texture, rise, moistness, etc. In the case of almost all baked goods, you cannot simply adjust the amount of chocolate without changing more than just how sweet the final product is. (Even baking times may be affected by sugar content!)
This is very true.
This varies considerably between cookbook authors. (I have noted in particular that, e.g., Stella Parks tends to overload her recipes with sugar—indeed, often ending up with double what I’d find reasonable—while Christopher Kimball’s recipes have sugar amounts that tend to be almost exactly what I’d find ideal. I suspect this has something to do with their backgrounds—Parks is from Kentucky, while Kimball is from New York / Vermont—and hints at a general pattern of regional variation, within the United States, in how much sugar tends to be added to foods of all sorts.)