The Maple Syrup Book

Good book,good recipes,beautiful photos, Great present !!

I purchased this book from Amazon sight unseen in order to teach myself maple sugaring (when I lived in Connecticut). In the end I felt this book did not help me much with that, I relied on another book called BACKYARD SUGARIN.I do love this book because it has gorgeous photos of maple sugaring from present and the past. The book has a sentimental and nostalgic tone to the writing.Eagleson, a Canadian, explains that her parents moved when she was ten and her family then began maple sugaring. She has romantic memories. At the time the book was published she had her own trees but they were still a year too young to begin tapping. her experience growing up with annual maple sugaring gave the book a nostalgic happy feeling to the book.I have one season of maple sugaring under my belt and feel this will not help you enough. This book provides warm and fuzzy writing, antique photos. It focuses on Canadian maple sugaring with a short nod to Vermont. It ignores all other New England states. It contains historical information about Canadian maple sugaring and Native people's method and tells of 17th century European settler's techniques.There are 8 recipes for cooking with it. If you want more recipes I recommend the book MAPLE SYRUP COOKBOOK by Haedrich which has over 100 recipes.There is a discussion of modern tapping processes with pressure systems and the use of plastic tubing. Canada's rules for organic maple sugaring are explained.This is not a practical how-to book it is pretty, educational, and nostalgic. I rate it 5 stars = I Love It, with the mandatory use of the two other books I mentioned for a more thorough how-to DIY backyard sugaring and more recipes with maple syrup.

The photos in this book and the light reading style make it a good read. However, the section with finishing temperatures has major errors. The idea is to give the number of degrees above boiling where finishing various products occurs. However, since it was editted from Celsius to Fahrenheit, 3 of 4 of those were misconverted to Fahrenheit temperatures instead of Fahrenheit degrees. The fourth one the Fahrenheit degrees are correct (22 to 24 F) but these got misconverted to Celsius temperatures (-6 to -4C) instead of Celsius degrees (12 to 13C). An ugly flaw in a beautiful book.

This was a gift to my sister that has sugar maples on her property. In one season, she yields enough syrup for 5 years from one tree alone so she really needs recipes to use it for her family.She likes the book and talked about the part that is not just recipes (history, techniques, etc.).

While this book has some very nice photos and a great history of maple syrup and the legends behind it, as far as a comprehensive complete resource on how to make it, it is not. This is a great coffee table book for someone who is into maple syrup not for someone who is learning to make it.

Good Book, Used in a Gift Basket