Both for the First Nations and for the settlers, the flow of sap arouses celebration. Once the maple trees have been tapped, it is time to harvest the sap, bringing together family members and responding to the call of the greedy. The importance of the production of maple products earned it first recognition as an event of pan-Canadian historical importance and, subsequently, designation as an element of the intangible heritage of Quebecers.
The stories of travelers and missionaries testify to the uses of the Aboriginal peoples and their relationship to the sap. It is the transformation of sap into sugar that has periodically caught the attention of many historians: who, French or Aboriginal, can claim to have discovered it?
A false controversy
The Récollet Chrestien Le Clercq published in 1691 the first description of the transformation of water into maple sugar on the North American continent by the Mi’kmaq of Gaspésie. By boiling it in tubs or wooden troughs, they obtain a syrup that hardens – much like sugar – and takes on a reddish color.
Photo provided by Wikimedia Commons / Library and Archives Canada
Making Maple Sugar, by Cornelius Krieghoff, 1852.
Whether the Aboriginal peoples used the boiling technique or the cold reduction technique, a technique attested to by some Europeans – by breaking the ice that forms on top of the sap contained in the trough – the result is the same, namely a liquid that thickens and eventually hardens. Its coloring is however different from that obtained by sustained boiling using metal cauldrons in sugar cane plantations.
However, the French invested massively during the XVIIe century in the West Indian sugar colonies and develop an expertise in the manufacture of cane sugar: they obtain a refined sugar of whitish color from it, in addition to all the other variants of sweet products. For the French and the settlers, white represented purity and became the desired color, both for sugar and for bread.
Therefore, at the beginning of the eighteenthe century under the pen of the Jesuits Lafitau and Charlevoix, the “French worked better [le sucre]”, or the Abenakis “did not know how to form sugar as we taught them to do”.
The consumption
In the XVIIe and 18e centuries, little is consumed in France and here. In the French world, sugar is first and foremost associated with the pharmacopoeia. It is mainly used to relieve colds and coughs.
In his History of maple sugarthe doctor Jean-François Gaultier indicates that the colony produced, around 1745, only 6000 to 7500 kilos for some 50,000 inhabitants, that is to say a maximum of 150 g per person, adults and children combined.
By combining maple sugar and cane sugar, consumption around 1750 varied between 500 g and 750 g per person. At the end of the 18th century, despite the fact that the French controlled the sugar trade in Europe, they only consumed 1.22 kg per person, a figure very similar to that obtained for the colony.
On the other hand, in England, it is a different story: if in 1700, consumption already reached 2 kg per person, in 1792, this consumption represented 6.7 kg per individual, i.e. more than five times the consumption of a Francophone on this side of the Atlantic or across the Channel.
The Canadian Cookthe first French-language recipe book published in Canada in 1840, offers only three recipes that specifically refer to either syrup or maple sugar.
The taste of maple sugar
Beginning in the 1850s, the taste for sugar took root in both France and Quebec. In 1844, Quebec produced 2,272,456 lbs of maple sugar for a population of 697,084 people, or a production of 1.48 kg per person.
Photo provided by McCord Museum, Montreal, Accession Number M997.65.10
19th century maple sugar mould.
Seven years later, maple sugar production stands at 6,057,532 lbs of sugar for a population of 890,261 people, or 3.08 kg per person, an increase of more than 100% in just seven years. It should be remembered, however, that the English-speaking population – whose taste for sugar is pronounced – accounts for 14% of the population. Even the Redpath company, established on the banks of the Lachine Canal during the 1850s, began to manufacture maple sugar.
A production change
Fifty years later, in 1901, maple sugar still sits at the top of maple syrup production, with Quebec producing 13,564,819 lbs of sugar, but down substantially from 1881 and 1891 figures.e century progressed, the more Quebec farmers abandoned sugar production, following the path traced by Ontario maple syrup producers.
If the syrup production figures for 1901 are unknown, those of subsequent censuses leave no doubt: in 1911, nearly one and a half times more syrup was produced than sugar. The gap will only increase thereafter, reaching nearly 14 times more syrup in 1951. In 1970, the gap amounts to almost 50 times more syrup.
Photo by JB Spencer, from The Maple Sugar Industry in Canada, Ottawa Department of Agriculture, 1913.
As this photo from 1913 shows, the use of tubing in the maple groves is not as recent as one would have thought, but it is nevertheless limited to that time.
The shift in production towards syrup coincides with the awareness raised, initially, by the manufacturer of evaporators John H. Grimm. His remarks annoy the Minister of Agriculture JE Caron, who takes a severe look at the quality of the product and the technology used.
These two propagandists react to the decline in prices and the falsification of products, in particular the appearance of the famous “post syrups”. In the early 1920s, the maple sugar market was still stagnating and experiencing a major crisis.
The Quebec Maple Sugar Producers Agricultural Cooperative Society was incorporated in 1925 at the instigation of Minister Caron. Two years later, the Citadelle brand was born and the Plessisville factory was built.
In the meantime, Quebec producers have chosen the syrup route, which costs less to produce while bringing in more. This change is facilitated by two factors: refrigeration and evaporator technology.
Sundew Recipe
The Récollet Chrestien Leclercq stated in 1691 that he mixed maple sugar with brandy, cloves and cinnamon, “which made a kind of very pleasant sundew”. Rossolis are liqueurs from the second half of the 17th centurye century, prepared from eau-de-vie (brandy) with sugar, essences and aromatics. Considered digestive, they attempt to supplant spicy wines such as hypocras. It is natural that in Canada, the sundew is prepared with maple sugar.
Ingredients
- 450 ml brandy [brandy] (2 cups)
- 3 cloves
- 5 black peppercorns
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 12 coriander seeds
- 5 ml anise seeds (1 tsp)
- 125g grated maple sugar
Preparation
- Place all the ingredients in a bowl and leave to infuse for 4 hours.
- Filter through cheesecloth – cheesecloth – and bottle.
Source: Massialot, New instructions for jams, 1703