Maple Sugar, To Make

Ingredients

• one pint of eggs
• a pailful of syrup
• a small piece of fat pork

Method

1. 1

   Prepare spouts and troughs for the trees.

2. 2

   Bore holes in the trees and place troughs to collect sap.

3. 3

   Gather sap daily and boil it down in a kettle over a steady hot fire, skimming the surface.

4. 4

   Add fresh sap as needed.

5. 5

   Once reduced to syrup, cool and settle, then draw off the purest part.

6. 6

   Further reduce the syrup until it can be molded or stirred to grain into sugar.

As published

This recipe was extracted from Cassell's dictionary of cookery (1892) by Cassell & Company, page 895. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

a pailful of syrup is amply sufiicient, and half as much will do very well. I now put my syrup into another kettle, which has been made perfectly clean and bright, when it is placed over a quick but solid fire, and soon rises, but is kept from overflowing by being ladled with a long dipper. ^NTien it is suffi- ciently reduced (I ascertain this by dropping it from the point of a knife, when hot, into one inch of cold water — if done, it will not imme- diately mix with the water, but will lie at the bottom in a round, flat droji), it is taken from the fire, and the foaming allowed to subside. A thick white scum, which is usable, is re- moved, and the sugar turned into a cask, placed on an inclined platform, and left undisturbed for six weeks, or longer, when it should be tapped in the bottom, and the molasses drawn oft'. It will drain perfectly diy in a few days. The sugar made in this manner is very nearly as white as lump sugar, and beautifully grained. From the scum taken oft' in cleansing I usually make, by diluting and re-cleansing, one-sixth as much as I had at first, and of an equal quality. It is not of much consequence, as regards the quality of the sugar, whether care be taken to keep the sap clean or not. The points in which the greatest errors are com- mitted are — neglecting to use a flannel strainer, or to strain after cleansing, to have the sugar- kettle properly cleaned, and to remove the white scum from the sugar." Maple Sugar, To Make.— The process of making majjle sugar is very simple, and easily performed. It begins by the preparation of sjjouts and troughs or tubs for the trees ; the spouts or tubes are made of elder, sumach, or pine, sharpened to fit an auger-hole of about three-fourths of an inch in diameter. The hole is bored a little upward, at the distance, horizontally, of five or six inches apart, and about twenty inches from the ground on the south or sunny side of the tree. The trough should be cut from white maple, pine, ash, or bass-wood. It is placed directly under the spouts, the joints of which are so constructed as completely to fill the hole in the tree, and prevent the loss of the sap at the edges, having a small gimlet or pitch-hole in the centre, through which the entire juice discharged from the tree runs, and is all saved in the vessels below. To give the best run of sap the distance bored into the tree is only about half an inch. The method of boring is far better for the preservation of the tree than boxing, or cutting a hole with an axe, from the lower end of which the juice is directed by a spout to the tub or trough placed to receive it. The tub should be of ash, or of some other wood that will impart no vicious taste to the liquid or sugar. The sap is to be gathered every day from the trees, and put in large tubs for the purpose of boiling down. This is accomplished by means of a steady hot fire. The surface of the kettle is cleansed from time to time by a skimmer. A small piece of fat pork

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.