Thursday, January 29, 2015

History of maple sugar

The first historic mention of sugar is found in China in the eight century BC, where it is spoken of as a product of India. The Arabs and Egyptians were the pioneers in crystallizing the sugar.

According to Robin Mower, it was as early as the mid-1500s that North American Indians and early European forest travelers drank the clear, barley sweet liquid; of both the sugar maple and the black ample as a source of nutrition.

Article published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for 1684-1685, where it is stated that the Indians have practiced this art of making maple sugar longer than any now living among them can remember.

The American Indians had a name for it Sinzibuckwud – the Algonquin word for maple sugar, meaning literally ‘drawn from wood’.

Tapping sugar maples was a fairly common practice in the Great Smoky Mountain. Native Americans used maple sugar sap and sugar to season meats and grain and to make candy and beverages. The Chippewa of the Great Lakes region seasoned fish heads with maple sugar and fed them to their babies; the Mohican mixed maple sugar with meal of dried corn for a snack or trail food.

The traditional of pouring maple syrup over popcorn to form balls was the origin of an American invention, Cracker Jacks, first marketed in 1893.

Although the earliest sellers called ‘Indian melasses’ and ‘Indian sugar’ there have been proponents of the notion that the natives of North America did not tap the trees or make maple sugar until the European came and taught them how.

During the 1800s and early 1900s, many mountain farm families maintained areas in the first called ‘sugar camps’ or sugar bushes for the production of syrup and sugar.

In the early 1900s, sugaring in the United States ceased to be family operations. Instead, the sugaring operation became industrial process.
History of maple sugar

THE MOST POPULAR POSTS