skimmings , also known as “scum,” are the foam skimmed off the top of the cauldrons in which sugar-cane juice was traditionally boiled down until crystallization, along with the water used to wash out the cauldrons and clean the various tools employed in the sugar-making process. In making Caribbean rum, from the seventeenth century until well into the twentieth, these liquids were collected, allowed to settle, and combined with molasses to form the “sweets” that were mixed with water and distilled into rum (this process appears to have been used throughout the region). The skimmings, which are rich in sucrose and minerals, impart a good deal of raw cane flavor (of the sort found in rhum agricole) to rum; however, they are almost never used anymore, due to the consolidation of sugar making into central refineries, rather than at individual plantations. See
Wray, Leonard. The Practical Sugar Planter. London: Smith, Elder, 1848.
By: David Wondrich