Maple Sugar and American History
Until the
early 1850s all maple sap was made into maple sugar.
If someone wanted syrup, boiling water was added to
the crystallized sugar to make the desired consistency.
This was due in part to the problem that syrup that
hasn’t been canned will mold and spoil quickly, but that’s
getting ahead of the story.
In
Colonial America, sugar was very political involving salves,
rum, molasses and the
Per
capita consumption of maple sugar remained quite high at
least in the northern states through the first half of the
19th century.
However, food science was beginning to become part of
American life.
During the decade before the Civil War advances were being
made in the canning of products.
Maple syrup may well have been the first to be
successfully canned simply because it is easy to can or jar.
At the same time pickles and condensed milk and
finally meats all became easy to preserve and safe to eat.
Many historians believe that the ability to can and
preserve food was a key component in the success of the
Union Army during the Civil War.
An
interesting part of the early maple sugar tradition still
lingers to this day.
If you are trying to compete with cane sugar in the
marketplace you would desire to produce a white sugar with
hardly any maple flavor.
This would be more on par with commercial sugar.
The darker more mapley flavored product would not be
worth quite as much.
This is
the basis for the current grading system in which pale syrup
with a light maple flavor (fancy) is still more expensive
than a darker heavier flavored syrup (dark amber), even
through most people want maple syrup to have a strong maple
flavor. If
supply and demand was the only factor dictating price, the
darker grades of syrup would probably surpass fancy grade in
cost.
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