CU research makes maple syrup the cream of the crop for '04 maple season

Cathy Cogswell, a field assistant at the Arnot Teaching and Research Forest in Schuyler County, taps a sugar maple in preparation for the 2004 season. The Arnot Forest's Maple Weekend celebration is March 20 and 21. Cornell University

By Nate Abbott

Inspect most breakfast tables and you find the usual spreads: peanut butter, jelly, cream cheese and jam.

Cornell microbiologist Randy Worobo and food scientist Olga Padilla-Zakour of Cornell's New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, N.Y., have increased the shelf life and quality of a little-known alternative called maple cream, making it easier to manufacture and store, and more appealing to the consumer.

Maple cream is the smooth-textured spread made by heating syrup to high temperatures, then rapidly cooling the cooked syrup followed by stirring. Despite its name, maple cream contains no dairy products. Instead, it offers the rich flavor of maple syrup in a form that can be drizzled over ice cream, licked off the spoon or spread on toast, bagels, muffins or pancakes. Until now, maple cream has not had widespread appeal due to its tendency to mold and separate. Because of these deficiencies, maple cream was only available on a limited basis. Most consumers have never tried it.

Padilla-Zakour, assistant professor, and Worobo, associate professor, both in the Department of Food Science and Technology, devised ways to produce maple cream that has a creamier texture and lasts up to six months. To prevent the formation of surface mold, the researchers added a food preservative, potassium sorbate, at a low concentration of 500 parts per million. To address the issue of separation, 10 percent of the maple syrup undergoes the process of inverting the sugar from sucrose to glucose and fructose by the addition of the natural enzyme invertase.

The result is a maple cream or maple spread that lasts longer, retains the same flavor and possesses a creamier texture. The processing will cost producers less than 10 cents per pound of finished product and requires equipment already found in typical maple syrup operations.

Worobo and Padilla-Zakour estimate that developing good manufacturing practices for shelf-stable maple cream could increase production and marketing by 10 percent, resulting in an additional $1.6 million per year in revenue for maple producers. For consumers, it adds value to what is already a naturally sweet product.

The success of shelf-stable maple cream is a good example of Cornell's renewed commitment to the New York maple syrup industry. In December 2003, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences announced plans to reinvigorate the Cornell Maple Program. The plan is a cooperative effort among maple producers, extension educators, researchers and others that calls for integrating applied research and extension, and developing strategic and working partnerships with key players in the New York maple industry.

Chuck Winship, of Sugarbush Hollow in Springwater, N.Y., produces 600 gallons of maple syrup a year and has sold 200 pounds of maple cream since August. He wrote the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program (SARE) grant that drove the maple cream development project and was one of two industry cooperators, with Lyle Merle of Merle Maple Farms in Attica, N.Y. In limited taste tests at his sugar shack, Merle has found customers prefer the creamier maple cream eight out of 10 times. His sales of maple cream have increased 6 percent since he started making the new shelf-stable maple cream.

Industry has always considered maple cream to be an under-marketed maple product with great potential. Peter Smallidge, New York state extension forester and director of the Arnot Teaching and Research Forest in Van Etten, N.Y., adds: "The marketing opportunities for producers will increase because this new maple cream can be displayed prominently and made more visible to consumers. If the marketing increases consumption and the producers respond to the demand, more syrup will have to be devoted to cream production."

Smallidge expects to have limited quantities of the product available during the nearby Arnot Forest's Maple Weekend celebration, March 20-21. For more information, call (607) 589-6076 or link to the Arnot Forest Web site: http://www.dnr.cornell.edu/arnot/. The Arnot Forest is one of 75 maple syrup producers in 30 counties across the state opening their sugar shacks for demonstrations and tastings during New York's Maple Weekend March 20-21. For a list of locations, statewide, visit this Web site: http://www.mapleweekend.com/.

More than 1,525 commercial producers with 100 or more taps are engaged in maple production in New York, making the state the second-largest maple producer in the United States. Maple production in New York state was valued at $6.83 million in 2002 and represents more than one-sixth of the total U.S. production.

The maple cream project was supported with funding from a U.S. Department of Agriculture-SARE Farmer/Grower Grant, USDA Fund for Rural America and the Geneva Agricultural Experiment Station.