Understanding Proper Cooking Skills

A Buyers' Guide To Maple Syrup

15 October 2014

Lois Young

What is the difference between breakfast syrup and maple syrup? If you are a breakfast connoisseur, this is an important distinction. While you can easily go down to any grocery store and buy breakfast syrup, real maple syrup can be hard to find. Breakfast syrup is also much cheaper than maple syrup. Thus, while you might be tempted to go with breakfast syrup because it is more readily available and cheeper, you need to know that it is also fake. If you have a taste for the finer things in life, your only choice should be maple syrup.

What Goes into Breakfast Syrup?

The main ingredient in breakfast syrup is high fructose corn syrup. The other ingredients in breakfast syrup depend on the brand that you buy. Each brand has its own blend, but you can expect a healthy dose of artificial flavors that approach the taste of real maple syrup, but real maple is inimitable. Because breakfast syrup is nearly ubiquitous in grocery store aisles and on restaurant tabletops, most people are more familiar with the flavor of breakfast syrup than with real maple syrup. 

What Goes into Real Maple Syrup?

Real maple syrup is a purely natural product. It is made by natural processes. The starch in maple trees slowly turns to sugar. When the time is right, maple growers then tap into the tree and extract the sap. This sap is then boiled down to make a syrup. It can take as much as 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. 

Is There Just One Type of Maple Syrup?

Maple syrup comes in various grades. You have two main division: grade A and Grade B. Grade B is so thick and has such an intense flavor that it is basically only used for baking. Grade A comes in three sub classes: light amber, medium amber, and dark amber. As indicated by the names of the categories, you might guess that these grades are based on the color of the syrup. The darker colored grades have a much more intense flavor than the lighter grades. To know which category you prefer, you might want to do some experimenting.

The Bottom Line

If you are looking for ways to spruce up your breakfast, consider buying some type of Grade A maple syrup. On the other hand, if you are looking for a way to spruce up your baking, reach for Grade B maple syrup instead of imitation maple flavoring. 

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