Category: Production guides

Neatness and Dispatch: A.J. Cook’s 1887 Guidebook “Maple Sugar and the Sugar-Bush”

By Matthew M. Thomas

 

Cover page of Cook’s influential “Maple Sugar and the Sugar-House” published in 1887.

A.J. Cook’s Maple Sugar and the Sugar-Bush, the oldest stand-alone publication dedicated to providing advice and guidance in making maple sugar and syrup, was first published in 1887. The 44-page illustrated booklet was written by Professor Albert John Cook of the Michigan Agricultural College (today known as Michigan State University) at the behest of the booklet’s publisher, A.I. Root. Although Cook had been making maple sugar his entire life, he was better known at the time as a naturalist, entomologist, and expert on the business of keeping bees and making honey.  You can download and read a copy of Cook’s booklet at this link.

Cook was born and grew up on his family’s farm near Owosso, Michigan. He attended college at the Michigan Agricultural College earning a Bachelor’s of Science degree in 1862, a Master’s of Science in 1865, and a Doctorate in Science in 1905. In 1867, he was appointed to the position of mathematics instructor at the Michigan Agricultural College before advancing to a position of professor of zoology and entomology in 1869. He also served as curator of the college’s museum and established the agricultural college’s extensive insect collection.

Portrait of Albert John Cook in the 1880s.

As an adult, Cook owned and maintained his own farm and sugarbush adjacent to the farms of his brothers Seth R. Cook and Ezekiel J. Cook  which were along the banks of the Maple River in Shiawassee County, Michigan. Cook was a prolific author, and his breadth of knowledge as a naturalist and scientist along with his practical experience as a farmer positioned him well as a frequent contributor to a number of rural newspapers. It was common to see articles on new and improved methods of farming and rural living in such publications as the New York Tribune, the Rural New Yorker, Philadelphia Press, New England Homestead, and Country Gentleman. Some might even describe his association with these papers as that of a correspondent or editor.

In addition to his articles and letters of advice, he was the author of the popular Manual of Apiary in 1876, the first textbook on American beekeeping that was republished through ten editions over the following decade. He also published Birds of Michigan in 1893 and California Citrus Culture in 1913.

Cook recognized that despite the great interest in and economic importance of maple sugaring, there was next to nothing written about it to guide and assist the sugarmaker to make the best quality sugar and syrup possible. He acknowledges in the introduction to the booklet that, prior to being asked by publisher Root, he had no plans to write a comprehensive guide to maple sugaring, even though Professor Cook gave advice and direction on maple sugar making as early as 1884 in a newspaper column that appeared in a number of papers in northeastern US states. Interestingly, it wasn’t until nearly 20 years later with the U.S.D.A. publication of The Maple Sugar Industry by William F. Fox and William F. Hubbard in 1905, that another comparable guide book was published. For more information on the history of maple syrup manuals, see my earlier post.

The first edition of Maple Sugar and the Sugar-Bush was released in the spring of 1887. Subsequent re-printings by the publisher made the addition of three appendices, one written by A.J. Cook, one by George E. Clark, and one by the publisher A.I. Root. The booklet continued to be printed and sold by publisher Root well into the early 1900s. A.I. Root of Medina, Ohio, the booklet’s publisher, was a successful bee keeper who ran a prominent business in northern Ohio for all things related to keeping bees. Root’s bee-business activities included publishing, where he put out a wide number of booklets on bee keeping and successful farming as well as a monthly magazine called Gleanings in Bee Culture that continues to this day. In addition to an extensive business in bee-keeping supplies, Root was a maple syrup buyer and packer in his corner of Ohio south of Cleveland.

Page from Cook’s “Maple Sugar and the Sugar-Bush” illustrating the exterior and floor plan of his model sugar house.

As a naturalist and professor of entomology, it is expected that Cook’s guide book contains a substantial section on the current understanding at that time of the ecology and physiology of the maple tree as well as a discussion of the various insect pests that plague the maple species. When the text moves to the actual discussion of the sugarbush ,Cook leads off with the motto, “neatness and dispatch,” which sums up his overall advice for the secret to making money from the best possible maple sugar and syrup. He proceeds to describe his own sugarhouse and boiling set up, touting the overwhelming superiority and efficiency of a modern evaporator over a kettle or flat pan. In the 1870s, Professor Cook was an early user and proponent of the evaporator designed and patented by D.M. Cook of Marshfield, Ohio, who was of no relation. However, in time he began to see limits in the Cook design and in the mid-1880s, shifted to the improved design of the Champion Evaporator from G.H. Grimm of Hudson, Ohio.

Cook had the benefit of personal experience from a lifetime of making maple products on his father’s farm and then his own. Cook himself witnessed the evolution of sugaring firsthand in his family’s operation, going from wood pails, wood spiles, and open-air kettles, to flat pans on a stone arch in a crude log shelter to covered metal pails, metal spouts and an efficient metal evaporator in a wood frame sugarhouse.

At the time of writing the booklet, Cook was tapping 600 trees and by 1890 had grown to tapping 800 trees in his sugarbush. Cook advocated putting in one spout per tree early in the season and adding a second spout to each tree later in the season. He used only metal pails with wood covers and advised, where possible for sugarmakers to frequently rinse the pails with water during the course of the season. He was a huge proponent of maintaining the cleanest and freshest equipment possible with periodic washing of tools throughout the season, and to collect and boil the sap as quickly as possible. He also advocated for the need to maintain a tight and neat sugarhouse. As he wrote, “it is filth – sour sap, not later sap, that makes inferior syrup,” showing his early understanding of the real nature and sour of off flavors and poor-quality syrup.

Cook’s booklet goes on to share a plethora of practical explanation and advice about operation of the evaporator; wood storage and selection; sap collection, gathering, and storage, and tree tapping. In all areas of sugaring, he addresses the motto from the beginning, pointing out the reasons and methods for choosing modern metal tools and how to keep the equipment and resulting sap as clean as possible. He even advised those who were tapping a smaller number of trees to just busy themselves with making syrup for their griddle cakes and not bother taking the syrup down further to maple sugar. Cook understood that maple sugar was never going to compete with cane sugar and corn syrup as sweeteners and that the manufacturers of maple products needed to embrace the notion that they were making and selling a luxury product. In fact, instead of making sugar, Cook boiled most of his sap into syrup which he canned in metal tins and glazed ceramic jugs. He made no mention of bottling syrup in glass. He noted that he sold his syrup at $1.25 a gallon, with the equivalent volume of sugar getting 70 to 80 cents or at most $1.00 despite the additional labor and costs associated with boiling from syrup to sugar. Even though Cook was not a proponent of making maple sugar with the sap he gathered, he still provided a detailed description of the process of making what he called barrel sugar, cake sugar, and stirred sugar.

There is no indication Cook was influenced or sponsored by any particular equipment manufacturer when he chose to recommend items by name and cost. Instead, because this was an independent publication, outside his position with the State Agricultural College, he was free to share his own personal opinions and experiences, free of criticism of favoritism.

Portrait of A.J. Cook during his time as California Commissioner of Horticulture.

In 1893 Cook took on a new position as professor of biology at Pomona College in Claremont, California, a suburb of Los Angeles: leaving Michigan and his farm and sugarbush in the hands of his son, Albert Baldwin Cook. Cook later left his position at Pomona College in 1911 and moved to Sacramento when he accepted an appointment as Commissioner of Horticulture for the State of California. He continued in that role until failing health forced him to resign in 1915 and he returned to Michigan. Cook’s health never improved, and he died in Owosso, Michigan in 1916 at age 74.

 

Special thanks to Karl Zander for providing a  digital copy of Cook’s booklet in PDF format to be shared with readers.

The Origins of the Spelling of Maple Sirup With An “I”

By Matthew M. Thomas

Readers of vintage United States Department of Agriculture reports, bulletins, and manuals from the early 1900s to the 1970s, often notice and wonder why the word syrup in maple syrup is spelled as sirup with an I. Where did this version of the spelling come from, how long was it in use and why was it used in the first place? Was it merely a colloquial variation stemming from people writing spoken words down in ways that phonetically made sense?

1958 example of Sirup with an I, cover of Agricultural Handbook No. 134, titled, Maple Sirup Producers Manual.

What about how syrup is spelled in other languages as the source? We know the English language is made up of words from a variety of languages from Europe and borrows and modifies all sorts of “foreign” words. French is an important language to consider in this regard, especially since there is a great history of maple sugar and syrup making in French speaking Quebec. In French, the spelling is sirop with an O. That certainly is a contender for getting from sirop to sirup to syrup, with only progressive changes to the first vowel. Interestingly, the German spelling for syrup is sirup with an I, also right on the mark. Were immigrants and residents with French or German heritage the source of spelling sirup with an I?

How popular was spelling sirup with an I in early America? A search of newspaper archives shows sporadic use of spelling sirup with an I throughout the first half of the 1800s, increasing in use in the 1850s to the 1890s, although it was still used less often than syrup with a Y and even then, in most cases, sirup with an I was used in relation to sorghum or cane syrup and much less often in referring to maple syrup. So where did this formal use of sirup with an I come from?

Cover of Department of Agriculture Bureau of Chemistry Bulletin No,. 134, titled Maple-Sap Sirup from 1910.

What about the question of how long the United States Department of Agriculture had been using the spelling of sirup with an I? The Department of Agriculture was created in 1862 and in 1863 published its first Report of the Commissioner (the Agriculture Department was led by a Commissioner at that time, not yet a Secretary). That first annual report of the department included a section titled The Manufacture of Maple Sugar authored by C.T. Alvord, of Wilmington, Vermont. Alvord was not an employee of the federal government, but rather a lawyer, progressive farmer, and regular contributor to farming and agricultural journals of the time. In Alvord’s 1862 report one sees no use of syrup with a Y, but instead maple sirup with an I, as well as the term maple molasses. In analyzing federal agricultural census data, Alvord wrote,

“It will be noticed that the proportional increase in the quantity of maple molasses manufactured in 1860 over that of 1850 is much larger than that of maple sugar. I attribute this to the fact that many farmers are name making “maple sirup” instead of maple sugar. At present prices it is thought to be more profitable to make sirup than sugar.”

It is curious that in the first instance where Alvord used the words “maple sirup” in the agricultural department report, the term is presented in quotation marks, as if it is a new or unique spelling to be noted, but then then quotation marks are dropped in the rest of the report. Alvord’s use of sirup with an I in the government report is especially interesting, since in other articles he wrote on maple sugaring published in agricultural newspapers from just two years earlier, he always used the spelling of syrup with a Y.

Example of Sirup with an I, cover of the 1976 edition of USDA Agricultural Handbook No. 134, titled Maple Sirup Producers Manual.

Similarly, in 1905 when William F. Fox co-authored the Department of Agriculture Bureau of Forestry Bulletin No. 59 titled, The Maple Sugar Industry, the text of the report exclusively used maple sirup with an I. This is in contrast to Fox spelling syrup with a Y a few years earlier in 1898 in his overview of maple sugaring in the 3rd annual report of the Commissioners of Fisheries, Game and Forests of the State of New York.

Who was responsible for the publishing of federal reports and manuals, and might that be the source of sirup with an I? The Government Printing Office (GPO), the agency responsible for the preparation and printing of official publications of the federal government came into being in 1861, one year before the Department of Agriculture. With the monumental task of being the federal government’s publishing house, it is safe to presume someone at the GPO was making editorial, style, and printing decisions from that point forward, including deciding to use sirup with an I.

1924 cover of Department of Agriculture Farmer’s Bulletin No. 1366, titled Production of Maple Sirup and Sugar,

According to the GPO, the first official GPO style manual was issued in 1894. In that manual under the heading of orthography, authors are instructed to follow Webster’s International Dictionary, which was an expanded version of the famous Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language first issued in 1806. With that direction from that era, a look at 1890 and 1900 editions of Webster’s International Dictionary of the English Language show sirup with an I as the preferred spelling, and syrup with a Y as a secondary spelling. In fact in the 1890 and 1900 versions of Webster’s dictionary, syrup with a Y does not even have its own entry or cross reference to sirup with an I. Looking back further to earlier versions of Webster’s dictionaries, as far back as 1828, and we see that sirup with an I was identified as the preferred spelling over syrup with a Y.

Sirup with an I continued to be presented as the preferred spelling in Webster’s Dictionary through the 1950s, but by 1959 with the release of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, the primacy had flipped with syrup with a Y getting the main listing and sirup with an I becoming the secondary spelling and its entry being limited to merely a cross-reference back to syrup with a Y. At one point in the 1920s, the GPO style manual began including a list with the preferred spelling of certain words. As early as 1922 we see sirup with an I included in that list. Sirup with an I continued to appear on that list as late as 1973, despite Webster’s dictionary shifting to syrup with a Y in the late 1950s.

If the GPO did not publish a formal style manual until 1894, what can we assume was the policy or standards they followed for the earlier years between 1861 and 1894? The GPO’s written direction from their 1894 style manual was likely formal codification of standards that had been put in place years before. Moreover, since at the time, Webster’s dictionary was THE go-to and standard reference for American English, it makes sense that from its very beginning of the GPO in 1861, it chose to follow the spelling preferences presented in Webster’s dictionary.

Unlike the federal government, most states never formally adopted the use of sirup with an I, with a couple of exceptions, namely New York and Wisconsin. The New York College of Agriculture at Cornell University used the sirup with an I from around 1910 through the late 1950s or early 1960s. Perhaps Cornell University had adopted similar editorial standards for their publications defaulting to the conventions in Webster’s dictionary. Sirup with an I was also use by the State of Wisconsin Department of Agriculture for a shorter period in the 1950s.

Although syrup with a Y has become the preferred spelling by the GPO and was clearly the English language spelling recognized and used by most in the United States and Canada, until very recently sirup with an I was still on the books in a few formal titles and rules at the Department of Agriculture. However, in 2015, with the USDA’s Agriculture Marketing Service’s issuance of new Standards for the Grades of Maple Syrup, the Department of Agriculture formally decided that it had officially discontinued its spelling of maple sirup with and I and announced that their official spelling would now be syrup with a Y.

And that explains the reason behind sirup with an I. From the early 1860s to the late 1950s with a holdover until 2015, it was the official policy of the United States Department of Agriculture and the Government Printing Office to spell sirup with an I, based on the guidance and direction of Webster’s International Dictionary of the English Language. What remains to be explained is how, why, or by whom the decision was made in publishing Webster’s dictionary that sirup with an I should be the preferred spelling over syrup with a Y.

Maple Syrup Producers Manuals – A History

I was recently given the opportunity to contribute a chapter on the history of maple sugar and syrup production in the upcoming third edition of the North American Maple Syrup Producers Manual. This led me to look into the history and progression of such manuals and government guides in the United States.

U.S.D.A., Bureau of Forestry Bulletin 59, The Maple Sugar Industry, published in 1905.

The earliest stand-alone bulletin, guide, or pamphlet produced by a government agency comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1905 under the title The Maple Sugar Industry as Bulletin No. 59, published through the then Bureau of Forestry (today known as the U.S. Forest Service). Written by William F. Fox and William F. Hubbard, this bulletin was less of a guide or manual and more of a report or description of the current state of the maple industry. It was also notably dense in its description of the trees and desired conditions of the sugarbush and fairly light in its discussion of the process and equipment employed in gathering maple sap and making maple syrup and sugar. This is not especially surprising considering both Fox and Hubbard’s backgrounds as foresters and not sugarmakers. In fact, as best as my research can tell, neither Fox or Hubbard had any real experience as maple producers, both as youths or adults.

Image of William J. Fox while assisting Gifford Pinchot and the USDA with the influential Township 40 survey in the Adirondacks, establishing a model at the time for systematic and sustainable forestry.

That is not to say that these men were without some knowledge, understanding, or admiration for maple sugar making, quite the opposite. William F. Fox, who was listed as collaborator for Bureau of Forestry and not a federal employee, was in fact the Superintendent of Forests for the State of New York, and a confidant of Gifford Pinchot and prominent leader in the growing field of forestry. Fox was also a decorated Civil War hero and well-know chronicler of the War. Fox first wrote about and advocated for maple sugar and syrup as an important forest product in the 1898 Annual Report of the Commissioners of Fisheries, Game and Forest of the State of New York. Prior to Bulletin 59, Fox published other writings and made presentations to such notable groups as the Vermont Maple Sugar Maker’s Association in the early 1900s.

Image of William J. Hubbard from the 1905 Washington Times story about his drowning in the Potomac River.

Like Fox, William F. Hubbard also appears to have lacked any direct experience with sugaring and instead was well-educated, young Forestry Assistant with a Doctorate in forestry from Germany. Although Bulletin 59 was published in the later months of 1905, Hubbard tragically died in July of that year, a few months before the bulletin was released. At the young age of 28 Hubbard drowned when his canoe overturned near the Great Falls of the Potomac River a few miles north of Washington, DC.

U.S.D.A. Farmer’s Bulletin No. 252, Maple Sugar and Sirup, published in 1906.

In the following year, 1906, under the authorship of William F. Hubbard, the U.S. Department of Agriculture posthumously issued a new Farmer’s Bulletin No. 252 titled Maple Sugar and Sirup hat was a n abridged version of the information in Bulletin 59. These USDA bulletins from the federal government were new to the maple industry and not all were impressed. Maple equipment manufacturer Gustav H. Grimm, and one of the most influential voices in the industry at the time was quoted as saying that much of the information in Bulletin 252 was “way-off” and outdated.

U.S.D.A., Bureau of Chemistry Bulletin No. 134, Maple-Sap Sirup: Its Manufacture, Composition, and Effect of Environment Thereon, published 1910.

In 1910 the U.S. Department of Agriculture Bureau of Chemistry issued Bulletin No. 134 written by A. Hugh Bryan, a well-known chemist in their laboratory. This bulletin titled Maple-Sap Sirup: Its Manufacture, Composition, and Effects of Environment Thereon included a short description of the process of making maple sugar but largely discussed the methods and results of detailed chemical analyses of maple sap and maple syrup and sugar.

 

U.S.D.A. Farmer’s Bulletin No. 516, The Production of Maple Sirup and Sugar, published in 1912.

In spite of his passing in 1905, Hubbard’s writing, but curiously not Fox’s (who was not a USDA employee), continued to serve as the foundation for subsequent releases of new bulletins by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 1912, Hubbard’s earlier bulletin was combined with Bryan’s in U.S. Department of Agriculture Farmer’s Bulletin No. 516 under the title The Production of Maple Sirup and Sugar. In comparison to earlier bulletins, No. 516 was more manual-like in its format and information, suggesting that, despite his being listed as the Chief of the Sugar Laboratory and a chemist, A. Hugh Bryan had expanded his breadth of knowledge with regard to the maple industry.  Farmer’s Bulletin No. 516 was revised and reissued in 1918 under the same title and authorship.

U.S.D.A. Farmer’s Bulletin No. 134, published in 1924.

In 1924, Bryan and Hubbard’s Bulletin 516 was re-issued as Farmer’s Bulletin 1366 with the addition of a third author, a U.S.D.A. Bureau of Plant Industry Chemist named Sidney F. Sherwood. With a 1924 publication date, Bulletin 1366 came out after the death of both the primary authors. William F Hubbard had died in 1905 and A. Hugh Bryan died in 1920 at age 46, a victim of the influenza pandemic that struck North America from 1918-1920. It was left to Sidney Sheppard to carry the Bulletin forward.

With its release in 1924 Farmers’ Bulletin 1366 was made available for a mere 5 cents, although many copies were distributed to sugar makers free of charge. Bulletin 1366 continued as the U.S.D.A. guide to sugarmakers for another 20 years with Bryan, Hubbard, and Sherwood as the authors. It was reissued in 1935 and 1937 under the description of “slightly revised” although it is unclear who was responsible for the revision work.

There was a lull in the updating and issuance of maple syrup bulletins or guides by the USDA during the war years and for some time after. This may have been in reaction to the increase in similar publications coming out of the research and extension branches of many universities and state departments of agriculture or forestry in the maple syrup region starting in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s (Vermont being an exception with department of agriculture booklets dating to the 19-teens).

With the assistance and leadership of Charles O. Willits, the US Department of Agriculture got back online in 1958 with the issuance of a new comprehensive manual for producers, published as Agricultural Handbook No. 134. Willits first began his long association with the maple industry when he came to work in the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in the late 1930s where he began by addressing the concern with lead contamination in syrup. With a move to the USDA Eastern Regional Utilization Research and Development Laboratory in Philadelphia as an analytical chemist in 1940 followed by a request to lead a new maple syrup unit following World War II, Willits was put in a position to learn as much as he could about all aspects of maple syrup production.

U.S.D.A. Agricultural Handbook No. 134, published in 1958.

Willits assembled the considerable new information he had gathered and absorbed into a new and comprehensive manual for the maple syrup industry. Published in 1958, under the title Maple Sirup Producers Manual, the title was a well-chosen reflection of its difference from the previous USDA bulletins, featuring dozens or illustrative photographs with a focus on bringing the maple industry information on the newest methods, equipment, and science and technology available. Willits revised and expanded the manual in 1963, nearly doubling the page numbers over the 1958 version.

U.S.D.A. Agricultural Handbook No. 134, first published in 1963.

Upon reflection, it is impressive (to me at least) that Willits research, assembled, and wrote the entire manual himself, at a time when he was extremely busy with coordinating and conducting research, planning and hosting the triennial conference on maple products. In 1965 another revised version came out under Willits’ name and ten years later with the assistance of a second author, Claude H. Hills, a third version was released. The purchase price of the Agricultural Handbook No. 134 was initially 60 cents in 1958, although again, many copies were distributed at no cost. The revised editions from the 1960s saw the price jump to 70 cents, and then to $2.50 with the 1976 edition.

First Edition of the North American Maple Syrup Producers Manual, published as The Ohio State University Extension Bulletin 856 in 1996.

With the retirement of C.O. Willits in the early 1980s and the discontinuation of the maple syrup unit at the USDA Eastern Region Lab in Philadelphia, the maple industry was left without a champion for continuation of the Maple Syrup Producers Manual.  Recognizing the need and desire to continue to provide the industry with an up to date manual, participants of the 1988 North American Maple Syrup Council formed a committee to make plans to begin the revision process and bring forward a new version of the manual. With an eye towards serving the entire maple community, both in the United States and Canada, the following version of the manual was titled The North American Maple Syrup Producers Manual. In contrast to past manuals and bulletins that were written by one or two or three individuals, the North American Manual would have separate chapters authored by individual experts, sharing the workload and allowing authors to focus on their areas of knowledge and expertise. In the end it took more years than anyone expected for the new manual to be released but in 1996, with the help of The Ohio State University Extension, the North American Maple Syrup Producers Manual was published in both hard cover and soft cover as Extension Bulletin 856.

Second Edition of the North American Maple Syrup Producers Manual, published as The Ohio State University Extension Bulletin 856 in 2006.

Ten years later in 2006 coming in at a whopping 329 pages, a new and improved, revised Second Edition of the North American Maple Syrup Producers Manual was released, again with the assistance of The Ohio State University Extension. In the not too distant future (sometime in 2021),  we will see the Third Edition of the North American Maple Syrup Producers Manual released, continuing this tradition and important work of bringing together useful and valuable up to date information on maple syrup production and distributing it to the maple producers in North America.