Is This the Syrup We’ve Been Waiting For?
Is This the Syrup We’ve Been Waiting For?
Hickory syrup in Indiana
My drive to work in Indiana is mostly flat, mostly corn and soybeans, mostly uninterrupted. So when one of my co-workers mentions she’s made a locally foraged syrup, similar to maple but different, using the local hickory trees, I’m ready for it: I’m ready for change.
The bottle she gives me is lighter in color than most maple syrup; she explains that rather than tapping trees and letting sap drip out, foragers in Indiana collect naturally shed shagbark from hickory trees and steep it in a simple syrup—the sweetness comes from regular table sugar, but the thick, smoky, tree flavor comes from the hickory bark.
The syrup begins as fallen bark, which needs to be scrubbed to remove external dirt and growing things, like moss and lichen, to get it ready for use. Through a careful process, the bark is “toasted” long enough to raise a sharp spicy scent without cooking long enough to char, which makes the syrup more carbon than smoke-flavored.
The resulting toasted bark must be carefully monitored as it steeps in the thick sweet syrup. Most hickory syrup contains only the extracts of the hickory bark, sugar, and water, so there is no masking impurities or burnt bits.
I grew up with maple as a flavor for many different things, and with the sweet blandness of the curvy bottle labeled “breakfast syrup.” The lighter color of the hickory syrup seems pretty innocuous on my table as my husband and I sit down to a pile of pancakes each. This particular batch of syrup is sweetness-forward, like so many, but the undertones are more like a mineral than the recognizable maple. There’s something a bit nutty in there too, which is no wonder given that shagbark hickory nuts are actually a forager favorite; mild and buttery.
Hickory syrup hasn’t gained as much of a following, perhaps because it doesn’t have quite the dramatic origin tale of maple; after all, there is something magical in the spile hammered into the tree, with thin drops of sap filling a bucket in the cold winter air. Hickory syrup’s origin story, like so much of Indiana, is humble and functional. The result, however, is delicious. It’s used for everything from glazes on meat and veggies with a little balsamic, to a delicious congealed layer atop a bowl of ice cream.
For me, it’s a perfect way to sweeten my cup of black coffee this morning; after all, I work this hard to get locally roasted beans, and hickory adds a lovely background floral taste to the cup, subtle but notable.
Sticky drops cling to my lips and coat my teeth as I finish the pancake, and I add more butter and more syrup to the rest of the stack, while thinking of other foraged offerings of the nearby forests that I haven’t yet found. In a heartland that has become known for certain kinds of uniformity, I’ll happily champion a flavor that stands on its own.