Dr. Patrick Charbonneau is a Montréal-born professor of chemistry at Duke University and a historian of the maple sugar confection known as sucre à la crème, or maple cream (candy). Maple Syrup History website creator Matthew Thomas (MT) recently had the pleasure of conducting the following email interview with Dr. Charbonneau (PC) which is designed to inform interested readers about Dr. Charbonneau’s corner of the world of maple syrup history, what he has learned, how that came to be, and where it is going.
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MT: We first became acquainted through your search for early recipes for sucre à la crème. Can you describe what sucre à la crème is and what makes it different from other maple sugar-based confections?
PC: First, thanks for your interest. I’m thrilled to be discussing this topic with you.
Sucre à la crème is a grained confection that was historically made of maple sugar and cream (or possibly other sources of milkfat). In a structural sense, it is akin to fudge, albeit without chocolate.
What differentiates sucre à la crème from other maple sugar-based confections is that most contemporary recipes for it use unrefined sugars that are not maple based, such as brown sugar. The connection of the confection with its maple sugar history has therefore been largely severed. Sucre à la crème is also special to me because my late great-aunt, who lived upstairs from my parents, used to make me some when I was young.
MT: Your primary areas of academic research and teaching are chemistry. How did you get interested in this topic and doing historical research?
PC: I have used sucre à la crème in countless courses and public demonstrations about the science of cooking. Contrasting it with soft caramel illustrates vividly (and tastefully) the importance of sugar microstructure on mouthfeel. In short, the grained confection is crumbly while the caramel is very sticky, even though we make the two from the same ingredients, mixed in the same proportions, and heated to the same temperature.
Therefore, when I was asked to contribute a chapter for the Handbook of Molecular Gastronomy, I immediately thought of writing something about sucre à la crème. Because the confection is not broadly known outside of the French-speaking northeast of the American continent, I also wanted to provide some cultural and historical context along with the technical presentation. When I started looking for related references, however, I was surprised by how little was known. What little I could find was not particularly convincing either. I therefore decided to plunge into the question myself.
MT: Although your research on the history of sucre à la crème is ongoing, what is the aim of your research?
PC: As I explained above, this project fell onto my lap by accident. As a result, its goal has long been somewhat undefined. That said, I quickly realized that one of the challenges of making sense of the history of sucre à la crème would be to disentangle it from that of related confections. Figuring out the confectionary landscape in which sucre à la crème emerged has therefore been my main objective thus far.
MT: Can you then tell us more about what else you are looking at and how that intersects with sucre à la crème research?
PC: While the history of fudge has been carefully documented from its emergence in the 1890s onward, that of other related confections have not.
My first article, which should soon appear in CuiZine, considered pralines made from nixtamalized corn coated with maple sugar. These confections were common frontier food in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence regions during the 18th and early 19th centuries, but they disappeared with the emergence of pemmican.
Eighteenth century cane sugar producers from contemporary Mexico also made a sucre à la crème-like confection, panochita de leche. The confection later spread to California and then to the rest of the US. It has since largely disappeared from Mexico, especially under that name, which (today) has a pornographic connotation [caution to readers if you google the term panochita you will bring up links to pornographic websites]. A history of this confection should soon appear in Gastronomica.
MT: I have found that most folks interested in maple history in the US do not speak or read French and that likewise, some in Quebec are not fluent in English. But then there are scholars like yourself who are fluent in both French and English. How has a mastery of both languages helped with your sucre à la crème research?
PC: It’s been essential. Honestly, I don’t know how one could do without.
MT: Out of curiosity, are there other languages you speak or read, besides French and English?
PC: I have some linguistic skills in Spanish and in Dutch. I learned the former through a couple of high-school and college classes, and the latter while a postdoctoral scholar in Amsterdam. By chance, these two languages have both been helpful in my study of grained confections in the Western world.
That said, I unfortunately do not have any linguistic skills in autochthonous languages. For the praline work, in particular, some notions of Iroquoian would have been handy. Although a linguist helped me out a bit, I’m not as confident about that aspect of the work as I wish I could be.
MT: As a chemist working in the physical sciences spending most of your time working on questions with relatively straightforward methods and results, do you find it difficult to put on your historian’s hat and navigate the use of more qualitative methods and the oftentimes inconsistent and incomplete historic record?
PC: Yes and no. Having done some family history work in the past, I have some ideas of the types of resources I might unearth. I also truly enjoy the chase. I get completely absorbed by looking for documents and other historical sources, and I enjoy visiting libraries and archives. Nowadays, a remarkable quantity of material can be tracked—and sometimes even found—online, which lowers the bar to exploring historical material broadly.
I nevertheless have some serious gaps in knowledge, and I have not been trained to write in that field. That’s one of the reasons I have collaborated with other researchers on all my projects thus far. Once my apprenticeship is completed, maybe I’ll risk going alone.
MT: Your research on the details of maple sugar related recipes in early North American cookbooks is fascinating and makes me wonder if you have considered writing a book that examines and documents the place of maple sugar in the foodways of North America from the 16th to the 19th centuries?
PC: The idea has crossed my mind, but I feel the existing scholarship on and around the topic is too thin to consolidate it in book form at this stage. Writing separate articles is also more compatible with my part-time engagement with the field. But maybe I’ll revisit this decision in a few years.
MT: Duke University is a bit outside the traditional range of maple syrup production, how has that affected your research? Do you have a favorite syrup supplier from Quebec or the US where you obtain your syrup?
PC: Great question! We always have maple syrup at home. My uncle’s neighbor on the chemin de la Presqu’île, just outside of Montréal, taps a few trees every year. Because my dad helps along, he brings home a few gallons. A couple of these makes it down to North Carolina every year.
MT: A fun part of studying historic recipes is attempting to try your hand at recreating and tasting the recipes of the past. Can you tell me more about your experiences working with old recipes? Is it difficult? Are there any successes or failures you can share?
PC: I haven’t done many recreations thus far, but my collaborators have. They are fortunately very talented, so they have figured ways out of whatever challenges they have met. For the panochita de leche paper, however, that took a few tries. The details of that struggle have even warranted their own publication, which should appear in that same issue of Gastronomica.
MT: Where can interested readers go to read more of your research on the history of the use of sugars and confections in the North American history?
PC: It should all be published at some point. I’ll make sure that a version of each of these articles is available on Duke’s institutional repository, which is accessible from my faculty page. In the meantime, feel free to reach out to me by email if you have any questions.
Check the following sites in the near future for links to publication of Dr. Charbonneau’s sucre à la crème and other confection history related articles .
Recreating Colonial Mexican Fudge
Excellent interview, thanks to both of you. Looking forward to learning more about these pralines.
Thanks Jeff, when the article has come out in publication, I will post links on this website. And of course, feel free to check it with Dr. Charbonneau’s website for other updates.