The history of maple syrup

The first people who produced maple syrup and maple sugar were the indigenous people in northeastern North America.

The first nations called it ”sinzibuckwud” which means “drawn from the wood.”

It is not know how maple syrup production began, as different sources tell different stories, but various legends exist.

One of them is that aboriginal tribes developed a ritual to celebrate the Sugar Moon, which is the first full moon in spring.

The indigenous people celebrated this day with a Maple Dance. Furthermore, many of the aboriginal dishes replaced the salt with maple sugar or syrup. A lot of the first nations saw maple syrup as a source of energy and nutrition.

When the first European colonization arrived in northeastern North America, the local indigenous people showed them how to produce maple syrup. The collaboration with the Europeans was essential for the first nations as the trading and production of maple syrup was their only source of income during the colonization. While the first nations had enough knowledge about the maple syrup, the colonialists knew how to distribute the sugar around the world.

The commercial maple sugar production began among settlers in the late 1700s and is one of the oldest industries in Canada.

The colonists improved the way maple syrup was produced and invented more effective ways to increase the production rate.

They started to drill holes into maple trees and fitted wooden spouts through which sap flowed. It then could be easily collected. The juice was transported into a sugar house. The fluid was boiled down to syrup in large metal kettles over a fire.

Over the next years, improvements in evaporation methods decreased the amount of time massively it took to boil down the sap. The transportation from the fluid to the sugar house was also improved to make work more comfortable and more efficient.

Around 1850 – during the times of the American civil war, syrup makers started to use large metal pans which made the production process more manageable.

A year later, cane sugar replaced was the primary dominant sweetener in the US and replaced the widely used maple sugar.

More effort was needed to distribute the product, and the main focus was to marketing the maple syrup.

Over the next 50 years the production process of maple syrup and sugar products as modernized to decrease the costs and to make the sugar products more affordable.

During the second world war, due to a shortage of sugar, the general public was advised to replace the ordinary sugar with maple products. More cookbooks and recipes mentioned the use of maple products instead of white sugar and increased sales dramatically.