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

[Elise Fleming]

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/