SC - Sugar Maples

[Crystal A. Isaac]

Par Leijonhuvud wrote:
> On Mon, 23 Mar 1998, Tim & Dee wrote:
> > Is/are there any sugar maple trees in Europe?  And what is Sweet
> > Water?
snip 
> You *can* get a sweet syrup from birches, but I don't know if it was
> done in the middle ages.

There is some precedent in using tree sap as a fermentable sweetener. In
her text, A Second Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Food & Drink: Production &
Distribution (page 229), Ann Hagan notes "Saps were apparently
fermented: Bartholomew Anglicus observes that birch and honey would make
a strong drink, and sycamore saps could be fermented with ale or yeast."
C. Anne Wilson further comments, "Birch tree wine was fermented from the
spring sap tapped from tree trunks in Sussex and in the Scottish
highlands. The sap could also be brewed as ale with only a quarter of
the normal allowance of malt." in Food and Drink in Britain from the
Stone Age to the 19th Century (page 383).

I will cheerfully make beer/mead/nonalcoholics for anybody who has
*primary* documentation for tree sap in medieval drinks (other than
Bartholomew Anglicus, I've already found a copy of him).

Crystal of the Westermark
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