Maple sugar, the Savages of Canada and the other parts of North America make a type of sugar , with a liquid they draw from a type of maple, which the English call for this reason, sugar maple , that is to say érable de sucre , which has been discussed in the article Maple. This tree provides the inhabitants of these harsh climates a sugar that compensates in part for the fact that sugar cane does not grow there. Ray calls it acer montanum cadidum , the Iroquois give it the name of ozeketa . There is another species of maple that Gronovius and Linnaeus have designated by acer folio palmato angulato, flote fere apetalo fossili, fructu pedunculato coymboso. See Gronovius’s Flora virginica, 41 and Linnaeus’s Hortus Upsaliensis 94. [1] Sugar is also drawn from it as well. The French call it red, plain, or lowland maple, and the English maple . The sugar provided by the tree is of a very good quality, and it is seen as quite healthy; but the sugar maple provides it the most abundantly. It is happy in the northernmost and coldest parts of America, and becomes rarer toward the south. As such it is found only on the very high mountains and on the northerly exposed side, from which it is seen that this tree demands a very cold country.

Here is the method the Savages and the French use to draw out the sugar . In Spring, when the snow begins to disappear, these trees are full of sap , so incisions are made, or they are pierced with a drill, and oval holes are made, by doing this a very abundant liquid comes out, which drips out ordinarily over the space of three weeks; however, it depends on the weather, as the liquid runs in greater abundance when the snow begins to melt and when the weather is mild, and the tree stops giving any when it freezes and when hot weather returns. The liquid that pours out is collected in a wooden trough, which leads it to a tub; when a sufficient quantity has been collected it is put into an iron or copper boiler and placed over a fire; the liquid is boiled down until it become thick and cannot be stirred easily: then the boiler is removed from the fire and the residue is stirred, which becomes solid, hard, and similar to raw sugar or to molasses when it cools. The sugar can be shaped into any desired form by pouring it into molds after it has been thickened. You know that the liquid is ready to crystallize or give sugar , when you observe that it stops forming foam on the surface (there is a lot of it when the cooking begins, care must be taken to remove it as it forms). Take a spoonful of the syrup and observe whether it turns into sugar as it cools. When it does, the boiler is lifted off the fire and placed on coals; stir it constantly so that the sugar does not stick to the boiler and does not burn; by continuing in this way, the syrup changes into a substance that looks like flour; then it is put in a cool place and one has sugar that resembles molasses. It is a brown color before being refined and commonly it is shaped into little flat hand-sized loaves. Those who make this sugar with more care clarify it with egg whites while it cooks, and therefore have a perfectly white sugar .

Maple sugar is considered to be much healthier than ordinary sugar and is extolled for its effectiveness against colds and lung ailments. But on the other hand, it does not dissolve as easily into water as cane sugar , and a much greater quantity is needed to sweeten. There is reason to believe that if it were prepared with better care than the Savages and the French of Canada do now, a greater portion of maple sugar could be drawn than at present and it would be considerably improved. The liquid that the maple provides, when placed in a barrel and exposed to the summer sun, makes a very good vinegar.

The Savages and the French of Canada often mix maple sugar with wheat or cornflower and make a dough with it that they use to provision the long voyages they undertake. They find that this mixture, which they call quitsera , provides a very nourishing food in a country where no provisions are to be found. The inhabitants of these countries also eat this sugar spread on their bread, everyone stocking away his supply in the spring for the entire year.

A type of syrup is also made with this liquid that runs from the maple; to this end it is not boiled as strongly as when it is reduced to sugar . This syrup is very sweet, very refreshing, and very agreeable to taste, when mixed with water; but it is subject to souring and cannot be transported far. It is also used to make different types of preserves.

The liquid as it comes from the tree is by itself very good to drink and it is thought very healthy; the [liquid] that runs from the incisions made in the tree at the beginning of spring is more abundant and sweeter than that which comes when the season is more advanced and hotter; a greater quantity is never obtained than following a hard winter when lots of snow has fallen and when the spring is cold and when snow still remains on the ground, and when the nights are cold and accompanied by frost.

It has been noted that when the wind blows from the east these trees soon stop giving liquid. They provide more in calm than when it is overcast, and never is more obtained that when a cold night is followed by a clear and mild day. Maples of an average height provide more liquid, those in rocky and mountainous locations provide a sweeter liquid those on the plain. A good tree produces between 4 and 8 pints of liquid a day, and when the spring is cool, a single tree can provide between 30 and 60 pints of liquid, 16 pints giving normally a pound of sugar . [2] The same tree provides liquid for several years, but in order for that to occur it is necessary always to make incisions or pierce the holes on the same side and to make them from low to high, and not from high to low, so that rain water does not get trapped in the openings, killing the tree.

We owe all of these details to M. Pierre Kalm, of the academy of Stockholm, who has seen for himself the work that has just been described, and who made a report to the academy of which he was a member, in an essay inserted in volume XIII of its mémoires for 1751 ; he concludes from these facts that maples grown in the northern parts of Europe could be also be tapped successfully. M. Gautier, correspondent of the Academy of Sciences of Paris, has made a similar report to the academy about the way in which maple sugar is made, in a dissertation inserted in the mémoires présentés à l’académie, volume II , which were also consulted for this article.

M. Kalm observes that sugar is also obtained from a type of birch tree, which the English call sugar-birch , or black-birch , betula fol. ovali, oblongo acumine serrato. (Gronovius, flora Virginica. 188) , but so little sugar is drawn from them that it is not worth the trouble.

Sugar is also drawn from an American tree, called bitter hickory by the French, and by the English hickory; nux juglans virginiana alba minor, fructu nucis moschatoe simili, cortice glabro, summon fastigio veluti in aculeum product. Plukenet, Phytographia . [3] The liquid that this tree give is very sweet, but of a very small quantity.

Sugar is also obtained from a plant called gleditsia [Locust] by Gronovius and Linnaeus, hortus upsaliensis 298. Lawson in his History of Carolina , p. 97, says that it is planted in many gardens in Virginia for this use. [4]

Maize or Turkish wheat also provides a liquid appropriate for making sugar when it is green; in the stem there is a clear liquid that is very sweet; the Savages of America cut corn to suck out this liquid. Sugar can also be obtained from the cotton plant ( asclepias, caule erecto simplici annuo. Linnaeus, Hortus Cliffortianus, 78 ). [5] It can also be drawn from flowers picked early in the morning when they are full of dew, from which is expressed a liquid that thickens when cooked, giving sugar .

Father Charlevoix in his histoire de la nouvelle france , tells us that sugar can be drawn from a liquid provided by the ash tree; [6] M. Kalm says he never heard of anything of the sort in North America and thinks Father Charlevoix mistook an ash tree for a maple that has ash leaves acer fraxini foliis, which grows abundantly in this part of America and which the inhabitants call ash . When incisions are made in it, a great quantity of very-sweet liquid runs from it. See the mémoire de l’académie de Suede , volume XIII, 1751 .

M. Marggraf, famous chemist of the academy of Berlin, has found several common roots in Europe appropriate for producing a true sugar , comparable to that drawn from cane. He obtained it from: 1. white chard, cicla officinarum, C. B.; 2. flageolet bean, sisarum, dodonoei ; 3. beets. All of these roots provided an abundant liquid which, with the help of the microscope, was discovered to have crystallized molecules, similar to those of ordinary sugar . To ensure the presence of sugar , he put the divided roots in rectified alcohol ( esprit-de-vin ) to decompose which he put into a sand bath; he heated it to a boil; he filtered the still hot liquid, and put it in a flat bottomed flask, which he placed in a temperate place; at the end of several weeks, he found that crystals had formed in the bottom of the vessel; he dissolved them again in order to have purer crystals. This method is quite appropriate to test if a plant contains sugar , but it would be too expensive to obtain it in large quantities. It would thus be much shorter to draw the liquid from these roots by expression, to clarify it with egg whites, and then to evaporate it over a fire and to crystalize it; in a word, to follow the same method as with ordinary sugar . M. Marggraf has also drawn sugar from parsnips, raisins, and aloe flowers from America. See the mémoires de l’académie de Berlin, 1747 .

In Thuringia, a type of syrup is drawn from the parsnip that the people of the country use instead of sugar , they even eat it on bread. It is thought to be a good remedy for chest colds, pneumonia, and the worms to which children are subject. First the parsnips are cut into small pieces, then they are boiled in a cauldron until they become tender enough to crush between the fingers; and while cooking them, care is taken to stir them so that they do not burn. After that they are crushed and the liquid is expressed into a cauldron; this liquid is boiled with new parsnips, expressed again, which is repeated until there is as much as is judged appropriate. At last the juice is evaporated, making sure to remove the foam that forms; continue cooking for 14 to 16 hours, being careful to stir it so that the syrup does not boil over. At last, examine it to see if the liquid is of the correct thickness. If you continue to cook it for too long, the material would become solid and form sugar . See the magasin d’Hambourg, volume VIII .

1. Johannes Fredericus Gronovius (1686-1762), Flora Virginica, exhibens plantas (1762); Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), Hortus upsaliensis, exhibens plantas exoticas (Amsterdam, 1748).

2. A pinte is roughly equivalent to two U.S. pints.

3. Leonard Plukenet (1641-1706), Phytographia seu Stirpium fideliter et exquisite ad vivum (London, 1691).

4. John D. Lawson (d. 1712), The History of Carolina (London, 1709; rpt. Raleigh, NC, 1860).

5. Carl Linnaeus, Hortus Cliffortianus, planta exhibens (Amsterdam 1737).

6. Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix (1682-1761), Histoire et description générale de la Nouvelle France (Paris, 1744).