Eating the Tree

I had friends over for a pancake brunch yesterday. My friend Sara had mentioned that she hadn’t eaten waffles in years, which led me into my now-common rave about how good Grade B maple syrup is. So, of course, I had to have Jake and her over to try it. I don’t have a waffle iron so I fixed pancakes instead.

I didn’t want to do anything fancy with the cakes — after all, this meal was about the syrup. So I made a basic batter except that I added about 1/2 a teaspoon of ground coriander to the mix. Not enough to show up strongly, but enough to provide an underlying hint that complimented the syrup nicely. A generous dollop of Amish butter rounded out the cakes and some top-flight country sausage from a local country ham maker added a spicy/salty element to the simple meal. But this is about syrup.

Several years ago I started reading and hearing about Grade B maple syrup. Like, perhaps, most people I assumed Grade B was inferior to Grade A — not that I’d ever seen any Grade B on a grocery shelf, much less tasted it. What I didn’t know was that the grading system was based on color and not flavor or quality. The lighter the syrup’s color the higher the grade. Grade B and below is typically sold to manufacturers for use as a flavoring. This is partially because of the perception of inferiority and partly because it has a stronger flavor that is useful in manufactured products.

I finally located some in a catalog and tried it. Wow! We’re talking maple flavor times 10. Since then it’s become a staple in my pantry. It’s good in bran muffins, on oatmeal, on biscuits, in sweet potatoes (try mashed sweet potatoes with maple syrup and rum), pretty much anywhere you’d use ordinary maple syrup. But my favorite remains pancakes. After all, syrup is why God invented pancakes.

Despite searching, I’ve never found Grade B in a store. I did once find it at a roadside stand in Vermont — but only once (Yankees look down their noses at it). I’m sure it’s available from a number of mail-order sources, but I get it from King Arthur Flour.

The first time I served it to my brother Kerry his comment was, “Wow! It’s like eating the tree.” That’s the best description of it I’ve heard.

6 Responses to “Pancakes & Syrup”