[Sca-cooks] Tree Saps: Was New World Food

[ranvaig at columbus.rr.com]

>I can't answer the question directly but I have been aware of birch
>syrup.  Since Scandinavia is full of birch trees looking in Northern
>sources for references to tapping birch trees seems appropriate.
>
Birch sap is much less sweet than sugar maple, it may have been a local item, but I doubt that it was used widely as a sweetener.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_syrup
>Making birch syrup is more difficult than making maple syrup, requiring about 80 to 110 liters of sap to produce one liter of syrup (more than twice that needed for maple syrup). The tapping window for birch is generally shorter than for maple, primarily because birches live in more northerly climates. The trees are typically tapped and their sap collected in the spring (generally mid- to late April, about two to three weeks before the leaves appear on the trees). Birches have a lower trunk and root pressure than maples, so the pipeline or tubing method of sap collection used in large maple sugaring operations is not as useful in birch sap collection.

http://www.extension.umn.edu/specializations/environment/components/birchbark1.html
Birch sap differs significantly, however, from maple in that it has simple sugars (glucose and fructose) rather than the more complex sugars of maple (sucrose). There are also other differences in chemical composition.

Roughly 100 gallons of sap are required to make a gallon of birch syrup. Maple syrup, on the other hand, requires about 40 to 50 gallons of sap per gallon of syrup.

Ranvaig