"Well into the 1800s, maple sugar was the only sugar readily available to North Americans.  However, in the late 1800s, the cane sugar industry in the Caribbean began to compete with the homemade delicacy.  After a war that included tariffs on the refined, tasteless white sugar, and bounties for maple sugar production, maple sugar gave way to the mass-production economy of cane sugar.  During the first half of the twentieth century, except for brief periods during World War 1 and World War II, when maple sugar helped ease the North American sugar shortage, maple sugar and its companion, maple syrup, became delicacies valued for their flavor rather than for their sweetening power."

Today, maple syrup, not sugar, is the favored maple product."

~ Sugartime, The Hidden Pleasures of Making Maple Syrup with a Primer for the Novice Sugarer,  Susan C. Hauser, Key Porter Books Limited, 1998.

[Photos:  Haldimand, March, 2016. lbw]