A Love Letter to Maple Syrup
Sap, fire, sweetness
Good afternoon from frigid Brooklyn, where I’m having a quiet weekend to myself! Today, I have another ingredient love letter for you: this time, on maple syrup. My friend Alex suggested this subject while we were in Vermont a couple weeks ago, and it felt appropriate to write it now, while I’m feeling moony about the Green Mountain State. Thank you for being here!
On Maple Syrup
Imagine discovering maple syrup:
You become acquainted with a maple tree in your woods — its trunk resolute and its leaves broad and veined like human palms. Sap seeps from cracks in the bark. Curious, you use a sharp stone to deepen one of the cracks, then collect the liquid in a birch container. The liquid is thin and transparent, like water, but when you lick it, slightly sweet. You wonder what would happen if you heated the sap — how might it change? You build a fire and heat large, smooth stones within its flames. When the stones are hot, you transfer them to the container of sap and replace them when they lose their fire. You watch the sap evaporate, slowly, surely, hour by hour.
It’s late, and the sap has turned fragrant and amber. You let it cool, but you’re impatient. The scent is irresistible and, you’re convinced, worth the sacrifice of your finger and tongue. And so you, fearless, dip your finger into the liquid and lift it to your mouth to taste. Though it burns, it tastes as it smells: lush, toasty, golden, sweet but not cloying.
I don’t know who exactly discovered maple syrup, or how it happened — and I’m sure it didn’t happen the way my daydreams just dictated. I do know, however, that Native Americans of the Northeast are credited with the discovery. Perhaps the Abenaki or Iroquois or Algonquin people. And what a discovery that must’ve been.
Tree syrup, who would’ve thought.
The more I cook and write about cooking, the more captivated I become by ingredients tied to the places I love most. Whether the ingredients are native to these areas, crafted there with excellence, or both, I feel a pull to them in the kitchen and on the page. Vermont is my birth state, as I never let anyone forget (cue my boyfriend’s eye roll), and my favorite place, now and for as long as I can remember.
As a child, Vermont was where I found red-spotted newts and let them crawl onto my hands, built fairy houses in the woods, and let maple candies from the general store dissolve on my tongue. I learned to climb at summer camp and scurried up rock faces, weightless, pulled up by my strong, wiry arms.
As a teenager, Vermont was where I would detach from technology — not by choice but by lack of phone service and internet connection — and as a result, find the real fixes: plunging in cold rivers, hiking, walking, dancing, reading, songwriting, piling on the couch in the morning with everyone in the house to chat and drink coffee.
Now, at twenty-five, as I navigate a career in food, I’m discovering Vermont in a new way: through the kitchen. The food culture in Vermont is rich — a product of the state’s long-standing agricultural traditions, commitment to sustainability, and distinct, dramatic seasons.
In Gesine Bullock-Prado’s cookbook My Vermont Table, she organizes the recipes by season. In her eyes, Vermont has six seasons: spring, summer, fall, stick season, winter, and mud/sugaring season. Each season presents its own delights, but maple syrup is the common thread. In the final section, she writes about maple syrup on snow, a Vermont classic and one of my earliest food memories. (It was a bright, snowy day at our neighbors’ sugar shack, and the snow was untouched, pristine, blinding. We scooped handfuls of soft, sparkling fluff into bowls, drizzled warm maple syrup on top, and ate. A taste I’ll never forget.) Bullock-Prado takes her maple syrup seriously, stocking it in a squeeze bottle next to her salt and vinegar for the natural sweetness almost everything needs.
I think I should start doing the same, given that I grew up in a house with a vat of maple syrup always close at hand. My parents buy the syrup at our local general store in Vermont and lug it down to Massachusetts when they return to Real Life. Although they could purchase Vermont maple syrup at home in Massachusetts, it tastes better knowing it comes from the trees surrounding our mountain escape. We, as a family, consume an above-average amount of pancakes, French toast, and waffles (otherwise known as bready vessels for maple syrup, my preferred category of food). The breakfast that tastes most like home to me is a stack of buttermilk pancakes with a pat of butter and a glug of warm maple syrup.
With that, I’d like to share my family’s favorite pancake recipe, otherwise known as Kevin Tally’s Buttermilk Pancakes. Who is Kevin Tally? I don’t know — I’ve never met him! I do know that he was a friend of one of my aunt Sarah’s friends, and one night, over thirty years ago, he and the friend stayed the night at Sarah’s house. The morning after, Kevin made everyone pancakes to say thank you. Sarah loved the pancakes, requested the recipe, and has since made them hundreds and hundreds of times and shared the recipe with lots of friends and family, including us.
I have nothing else to say besides that these are perfect buttermilk pancakes: crispy-edged, fluffy, and light. Let’s keep Kevin Tally’s maple syrup-fueled legacy going!
Kevin Tally’s Buttermilk Pancakes
Only very subtly rewritten from the original recipe I received from Sarah!
Ingredients:
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg
3 tablespoons butter, melted
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
Directions:
In a medium bowl, mix the buttermilk, egg, and butter. In a separate bowl, sift the dry ingredients and whisk to combine. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, making sure not to over-mix; the batter should be thick and slightly lumpy. Cook pancakes on medium-high heat on a greased skillet or griddle. Flip once only, as soon as the batter starts to bubble. (The total cooking time should be no more than 3-5 minutes.)
Serve with butter, maple syrup, maybe some fresh berries or crispy bacon on the side…the usual suspects.
The end!
More from me soon! Wishing you a peaceful weekend.
x Phoebe
Loved reading about Maple Syrup and I cant wait to try those splendid pancakes too
Kevin’s pancakes look fantastic. Thank you for sharing the recipe! Isn’t it funny to have a family favorite named for someone you have no idea who it is? We have a few of those too.
As a fellow maple lover and Francophile, I highly recommend the maple tart at Clamato. The recipe is out there in the internet ether. In French 😱 Google Clamato tartelette d’erable recette. I’ve made them and they are exactly like the ones at Clamato/ Tapisserie. Except for the whipped cream part which I couldn’t make into a perfect giant quenelle. I thought for 5 seconds about buying the Septime cookbook but the maple tart recipe is about the only one accessible to a home cook. Or a least to this home cook. If you do make the tartelettes note that the maple syrup amount is in centiliters, not millliliters. I didn’t notice at first!