MAPLE SUGARING TODAY & YESTERDAY

Here in New England, it’s maple sap and syrup time when maple syrup lovers tap the maple trees, collect the sap and boil it down for syrup and sugar. Some, like my husband used to do, collect it on a small scale, just enough for a family’s own use. Others have commercial scale operations and make sap to sell.

When I was a newspaper reporter I visited local maple syrup operations, large and small, and wrote stories for my readers.

My aunt, who, long ago, spent part of her childhood in Quebec Province, Canada and the rest of her life in Dover, NH, told of the sugaring parties, those social events that young people enjoyed in the early 1900s in Quebec.

Before Aunt Freda died, I asked her to write some of her memories. She included this description of sugaring parties in Canada:

In the spring was the best time, So many “sugaring off” parties and maple sugar. Each had a pan of clean snow and sour pickles on tables and a fork. Then pour the hot maple syrup on the snow and eat it with your fork.

It’s delicious. Just when you think you can’t eat another mouth full just take a pickle, then start all over again. All the churches had sugar parties in the spring.

I never attended a sugaring off party. We didn’t have them in the area of New York State where I grew up. However, we did enjoy our attempts at maple sugaring on our Poughquag, NY farm, collecting sap from the maple trees in our front yard. Then Mother helped us boil it down in pans on the kitchen wood burning cook stove.

Maple Recipes

Aunt Freda liked anything with maple flavoring and made with maple syrup or sugar. When she felt pure maple syrup was too expensive, she stirred up her own using maple flavoring. When she purchased donuts, Aunt Freda usually chose those covered with a maple flavored icing.

She also used:

* Maple syrup in baked beans

* Maple syrup glaze for ham

* Maple syrup drizzled over oatmeal or other cooked cereal

* Maple icing for cakes and cookies

* Maple flavoring substituted for vanilla in recipes

(Mary Emma Allen researches and writes from her woodland NH home.)

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