Some Secrets from the Sugar Bush Kitchens

• Maple syrup is 64% carbohydrates compared to 100% in granulated sugar…
• 1 ½ lbs. maple syrup gives 10% of the daily amount of iron required by a physically active person…
• Maple syrup keeps indefinitely in a freezer. Keep open containers cold to better maintain the delicate maple flavor…
• If you wish to put your syrup into smaller containers, heat syrup to 180 degrees F. Fill hot sterilized jars-leave no air space. Seal and place in boiling water for ten minutes…
• 1 gallon of pure maple syrup weighs 11 pounds…
• Sugar content of sap averages 2.5% and sugar content of syrup is 66% or more…
• A maple tree is about 40 years old or more before it is tapped…

French toast with Maple

• 6 to 8 slices of bread
• 3 eggs
• ½ cup maple syrup
• 1 cup milk
• ¼ cup light cream salt
• Nutmeg

Beat eggs with maple syrup. Add milk, cram, salt, and nutmeg. Dip bread one slice at a time, than drain and fry in a hot buttered pan on both sides.

Maple Mousse

Heat 1 cup of maple syrup at low heat. Beat egg whites [2 eggs] until stiff. Add syrup to egg whites. Serve in small desserts dishes, garnish with flaked almonds, grated coconut, or nuts.

There are times when I still feel an alien to country life. But one of the best things about Cranberrie Cottage never changes. Each season, with its unique problems, I am again reminded how fortunate I am-securing a mailbox in cement by the highway; draining the pipes when the little house is alone and powerless in a winter storm; clearing the snow, pulling me out of the mud, or leaving a load of cow manure; bringing oil at dawn on a frozen Sunday; calling on the phone just to say she misses the lights in my house when I’m away… So many such things would fill another book.

My wine-making neighbor promises to help me clear brush around some old maples on the lot line. Then I’ll tap my first tree. Such fun!

John and his wife, Jessie, drink the sap as a refreshing tonic. But they use the sap to make Wine du Maple too. Here is a recipe to try some Indian spirits from maple nectar.

Algonquin Ambrosia

• 1 gallon maple sap [or water]
• 3 lemons
• ¼ gallon maple syrup
• 1 pkg. wine yeast
• ¼ tsp. grape tonnin
• Yeast nutrient

Peel lemons, remove pith, boil peel for 15 minutes. Strain, add water to 1 gallon. Add lemon juice, nutrient, tannin and maple syrup. When syrup dissolves, about 70 degrees F., add yeast. When fermentation slows-about 1 week-siphon into gallon carboy and airlock. When wine clears, rack into clean carboy and leave until all fermentation is finished.

Bottle-be patient-for at least three months!

Pain Perdu [French toast]

• 6 thick slices of French bread-[day old]
• 1 ¼ cup milk
• ½ cup maple syrup
• 2 eggs, beaten
• ½ tsp. vanilla
• Flour
• Clarified butter for frying
• Crumbled maple sugar or drizzle of maple syrup
• 2 tbsp. Grand Marnier [optional]

Heat milk slightly-do not boil-so maple syrup will blend well. Add vanilla and Grand Marnier. Soak bread in this mixture.

Now dip each slice into the beaten egg, then quickly into flour. Shake off excess flour and fry in butter until golden, slightly crisp on each side. Sprinkle with maple sugar or syrup and serve hot.

Annapolis Valley Special

Using double boiler, cook a ¼ cup rice with 2 cups of milk and ½ tsp. salt. Prepare 6 apples-pare, core and cut into halves crosswise. Cook apples until barely tender in 1 ¼ cup maple syrup mixed with 1 cup water.

Add rice and apples alternately with apples on top. If any syrup mixture remains, pour it over the top layer. Fill cavities of top apples with maple syrup and crushed nutmeats well mixed. Can be served with cream.

Writers have delighted in the imagery of the word “Sugar Off”. Archibald MacMechon [headwaters of Canadian Literature] wrote that one day on a Windsor stagecoach, Judge Thos. Chandler Haliburton overheard a fellow passenger talking to a country woman. She was talking about a Temperance speaker and she used the word “sugar off”. The story is that Haliburton got his material for his famous Sam Slick stories from just such moments and he quickly took out his notebook and jotted down the racy phrase.

Sugar-on-Snow

This is the heart of the famed “Sugaring Off” party

Boil the maple syrup. Most versions suggest 230-250 degrees F. on the candy thermometer, drop a tablespoon over some hard-packed fresh snow [usually the snow is served in small dishes or even plastic coated plates for a large party]. The maple syrup is transformed on contact with the cold snow. Suddenly before you is a waxy, sweet, chewy, taffy-like concoction, the like of which you can’t quite describe-but every year when the sap weather come, there is a yearning for one more taste of this-nature’s sweetest mystery.

Most recipes suggest old-fashioned pickles in brine as a side dish-and doughnuts.

Spicy Maple Bread [Recipe makes two loaves]

• 3 cups sifted pastry flour
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1 egg
• 1 cup maple syrup
• 2 tsp. soda
• ½ cup brown sugar
• ½ tsp. salt
• ½ cup shortening
• 1 tsp. each cinnamon and ginger
• ½ tsp. each cloves and nutmeg

Mix flour, salt, soda, and spices.

Cream sugar and shortening adding maple syrup into which the beaten egg has been stirred. Gently stir in all dry ingredients, and slowly add the boiling water.

Butter and flour two pans and preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Bake about a half hour. Serve with a hard sauce or whipped cream topped with slivered almonds and sprinkled with nutmeg.

Broiled Curried Scallops

• 2 lbs. Scallops
• ¼ cup maple syrup
• ¼ cup prepared mustard
• 1 tsp. lemon juice
• 2 tsp. curry powder

Line broiler pan with foil and arrange scallops. Combine the syrup, mustard, lemon juice, and curry powder. Using half the mixture, brush scallops-broil at lowest level 10 minutes. Turn scallops, brush with remainder of mixture. Broil 10 minutes. Serves 5 or 6

Maple Spice Cookies

Sift together on waxed paper:

• 3 ½ cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp. each baking soda and cinnamon
• ¼ tsp. gr. cloves and gr. Cardamom
• ¼ tsp. ground ginger

Beat well in a large bowl:

• 1 cup honey
• 1 cup maple syrup
• 1 egg
• 1 Tbsp. orange juice

Blend above into flour mixture. Add:

• 4 oz. finely chopped candied orange peel
• 1/3 cup finely chopped almonds

Dough should be stiff and sticky. Wrap in waxed paper. Chill overnight.

Divide dough into quarters. Roll out to 1/8 inch thick on floured board. Use a cookie cutter-about 2 ½ inch size. Keep about 1 inch apart on greased sheet. Bake at 400 degrees F. for about 8 minutes. Cool on racks.

While still hot, brush top with hot sugar glaze.

Turkey Hill Red Cabbage

• 1 red cabbage, medium size
• 1 ½ tbs. Salt
• ¼ tsp. pepper
• 1/8 tsp. nutmeg [freshly grated is preferable]
• 3 Tbsp. vinegar
• 2 large cooking apples
• 3 Tbsp. maple syrup

Quarter and core the washed cabbage. Cut into slender strips. Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg and vinegar. Mix well. Place in well buttered casserole. Bake approximately 45 minutes at about 350 degrees F.-a moderate oven.

Peel, core and slice apples. Stir into the cabbage after adding the maple syrup. Cook about 30 minutes more. Serve from oven to table.

From Turkey Hill Erabliere, Brome, Que.

Baked Ham Slice

• 1 ham slice about 1 in. thick
• ½ cup granulated maple sugar
• 1 cup orange juice
• 1 tsp. cornstarch
• 1/8 tsp. ground ginger

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Combine maple sugar, cornstarch and ginger in shallow baking dish. Stir in orange juice. Add ham slice coating well on both sides. Bake 45-60 minutes basting with the sauce.

It is perhaps in the kitchen that one is most aware of the human past, for the kitchen…was the center of existence of the farm.

Henry Beston

Especially Maine

Parrsboro Pie

Begin with a one-crust shell using your own recipe. Do not bake.

• 2 cups maple syrup
• ½ cup brown sugar
• 1 cup flour
• ½ cup butter
• ½ tsp. soda

Pour syrup into shell after adding soda to it. Combine sugar, flour, and butter. Sprinkle over maple syrup. Bake ½ hour at 350 degrees F.

Maple Biscuit Roll

Use your favourite baking powder biscuit recipe. Roll into a thin dough, slice tart apples and spread over the dough. Roll and slice.

In a saucepan combine 2 cups of maple syrup, 1 Tbsp. butter, and 2 cups of hot water. Bring this to a boil. Add slices [you may want to put mixture in a baking dish] and cook at 400 degrees F. until golden brown. Serve with the hot sauce spread over the top.

Pasture land first reverts to berries, then such trees as ash, birch and poplar-then soft woods-then Maple.

Pour un soir d’hiver

Cotelettes de porc sauce aigre douce [or]

Sweet and Sour Pork Chops

• 4 thick pork chops
• ¾ cup tomato juice
• 1 Tbsp. vinegar
• ¼ cup maple syrup
• ½ tsp. dry mustard
• ¼ tsp. ground cloves
• Small bay leaf
• Salt and pepper

Brown chops in dab of fat. Add salt and pepper and place in 2 quart casserole. Combine remaining ingredients-bring to a boil. Pour over chops. Cover and bake at 360 degrees F. about 1-1 ½ hours.

It takes a pile of wood 8’x4’x4’ to boil 250 gallons of sap into 5 gallons of syrup. Another pile half as big is used to turn the syrup into hard brown sugar.

An efficient Sugar House should hold at least two cords of dry cordwood.

Vermont Rolls

• 2 Tbsp. shortening
• 1 cup scalded milk
• 1 Tbsp.sugar
• 1 yeast cake
• ½ tsp. salt
• 2 ½ cup flour

Mix and rise about an hour. Roll out on lightly floured board and sprinkle with broken pecans and dribbles of maple syrup. Dough should be about ½ inch thick. Roll dough and slice in about 1 inch pieces. Place each one in a muffin tin, on top of a few nuts and1 Tbsp. maple syrup. Let the dough rise and bake at 400 degrees F. for about 20 minutes.

Maple syrup is the first crop of the year.

Early spring is the sweetest-and the busiest-in sugar country.

Backwoods Roly-Poly

Prepare biscuit dough rolled out to ½ inch thickness. Brush with melted butter and top with peeled, cored, sliced apples mixed with maple syrup and nutmeg. Roll like a jellyroll. Place in shallow dish, cover and steam 1 ½ to 2 hours. Uncover, sprinkle lightly with grated maple sugar and serve plain, or with hard sauce.

The Quebec Maple Producers’ Cooperative formed in 1925, was 4,300 members. Syrup received at the Co-op; 1979 was 2,995`1980 was 3,407 1981 was 4,353.