The tagline for Log Cabin, which is made with sugar, is “Authentic Maple Tasting Syrup for over 120 years.” This careful wording is intentional and crafted to avoid false advertising claims. If you’re wondering where Aunt Jemima or Log Cabin syrup fit into this picture - these common table products are not real maple syrup. Over time, the industry evolved enough that companies from Quebec to Vermont produced ready-made “evaporators,” essentially giant frying pans with fire boxes built underneath.Īs the natural foods movement has picked up steam in recent years, maple syrup has become, along with honey, an increasingly attractive alternative to processed cane sugar. Some sugar makers heated the sap further, turning it into crystallized sugar. Sugar makers boiled off most of the water over a wood fire - what they were left with was brown sweet syrup. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup because sap is about 98% water. Every day or two - depending on how fast the sap was running out of the trees - the farmers would empty out the buckets into larger containers or tanks and haul the watery substance to a “sugar house” usually built in the woods. (Sap typically runs out of maple trees on days when the temperature is around 40 degrees following a night when the mercury dropped below freezing.) The farmers called the maple tree stands “sugar bushes” and hung buckets under the drilled holes. From the 17th century onward, dairy farmers who wanted to supplement their income from milk - or who just needed a source of sweetener that was better and cheaper than sugar or molasses - drilled small holes in the trees during the brief weather window between winter and spring.
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