/ Polysaccharides / Most common / Carrageenans
Carrageenans
Carrageenans can be found in mosses and seaweeds.
Irish moss was used by the Irish for medicinal and food purposes more than six hundred years ago in Carraghen on the south Irish coast. It was especially used for its unique property of gelling milk. It was also used in the same way in France on the coasts of Normandy and Brittany in ancient times when the bleached lichen was used to make flans simply by cooking the seaweed in milk. It was not until after the Second World War that extracts were manufactured industrially, mainly for the food industry.