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

[Mark Hendershott]

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.

Simon Sinneghe
Briaroak, Summits, An Tir


At 09:00 AM 4/26/2008, you wrote:
>The comment was made regarding maple syrup as New World:
>
> >maple syrup perhaps... but a lot of different trees have sap that i
> >find hard to believe no one would have tried to do something with.
>
>Well, consider how time-consuming the production of maple syrup is and the
>process that it takes to produce it. The tree has to be tapped at a
>specific time of year with specific weather fluctuations. The sap needs to
>be gathered and then laboriously boiled down. I don't recall how many
>gallons of sap it takes to make one gallon of syrup, but it's a large
>ratio.
>
>Now, let us ask ourselves... Have we ever seen depictions of tapping trees
>in medieval illustrations? Can we recall any mention of using a tree syrup
>for sweetener? Honey, yes. Sugar, yes. Are there any references to
>people doing this as a seasonal job? If using a tree sap for some type of
>syrup or sweetener had been done, would there not be some visual or written
>reference? Can anyone think of any such? That might be a confirmation
>more than extrapolating that if we do it now, it could have been done prior
>to 1600.
>
>Alys K.
>
>Elise Fleming
>alysk at ix.netcom.com
>http://home.netcom.com/~alysk/
>
>
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