by Amy Stewart
Another threat to the tree is climate change: as drought conditions worsen, it is confined to an ever-smaller belt across Sudan. Agricultural aid workers are trying to expand the tree’s habitat and teach farmers how to grow “gum gardens” using special water catchment techniques that help the trees survive on minimal rainfall and produce enough gum to support a family. The farmers also contend with plagues of locusts, termites, fungal diseases, and ravenous goats and camels.
This twenty-foot-tall tree puts down a taproot one hundred feet long, which explains its ability to survive tough desert conditions. The tiny leaves help prevent water loss, and the canopy’s expansive umbrella shape gives those leaves maximum exposure to sunlight to make up for their size. The sweet, sticky gum also serves a purpose to the tree, healing wounds, protecting against insect damage, and fighting disease.
By about 2000 BC, Egyptians had learned that scraping the tree’s bark would put it under stress and force it to produce more gum. They used it to make ink, mixed it into food, and employed it as a binding paste for mummification. (The old French word gomme comes from older words for gum, the Egyptian komi and Greek komme.) The gum has been in continuous use as a binder in inks, paints, and other products of industry and as a thickener and emulsifier for medicinal syrups, pastes, and lozenges. Bakers used it in ice cream, candies, and icing, and it was only a matter of time before the sweet sirop de gomme became a useful cocktail ingredient as well. It adds a silky texture that is impossible to replicate with simple syrup.
Gum arabic has returned as an ingredient in specialty cocktail syrups, but it’s also easy to mix up a batch at home. Buy food-grade gum arabic from spice stores or shops catering to bakers and confectioners. (Gum arabic sold in craft stores is a lesser grade intended for use in art projects.)
GOMME SYRUP
2 ounces powdered food-grade gum arabic
6 ounces water
8 ounces sugar (less to taste)
Combine the gum arabic and 2 ounces of the water in a saucepan and heat to a near boil, dissolving the gum. Once cooled, make the simple syrup by combining the sugar and remaining 4 ounces of water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, allowing sugar to dissolve. Add the gum mixture, heat for 2 minutes, and then allow to cool. Some people prefer a simple syrup made with equal parts sugar and water, so try a small batch and then adjust the quantities to your taste. Keep refrigerated; it should last at least a few weeks.
SPRUCE
Picea spp.
pinaceae (pine family)
The fact that a vitamin C deficiency caused scurvy was not entirely understood until the 1930s, but ship captains had, from time to time, managed to prevent the disease by stocking up on lemons and limes before leaving on a long voyage. And when citrus wasn’t available, they unknowingly substituted other sources of vitamin C—including the young, green tips of spruce trees.
Captain James Cook tried a recipe on his crew that he had obtained from the botanist Joseph Banks. The recipe consisted of spruce twigs boiled in water with some tea to improve the flavor, which would then be combined with molasses and a bit of beer or yeast to start the fermentation. Cook wrote in his journal that either berries or spruce beer cured the crew of scurvy.
Spruce beer was well known to Jane Austen, who wrote to her sister Cassandra in 1809 about brewing a “great cask” of it. A pivotal moment in Emma even revolves around a recipe for spruce beer, with Mr. Knightley offering the recipe to Mr. Elton, who borrows a pencil from Emma to write it down. In a classic Austen plot twist that would prove important later, her friend Harriet stole the pencil Mr. Elton used to write down the ingredients as a remembrance of him.
Recipes for spruce beer were abundant in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century journals. Benjamin Franklin is widely credited with creating a recipe for the beer—but it wasn’t his invention. While he was ambassador to France, he copied several recipes from a cookbook called The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, written by a woman named Hannah Glasse in 1747. (Glasse, by the way, wrote a number of interesting recipes Franklin missed, including one called Hysterical Water that included parsnips, peony, mistletoe, myrrh, and dried millipedes, soaked in brandy and “sweetened to your taste.”) He never meant to take credit for her recipe; he simply copied it for his personal use. Nonetheless, it was found among his papers, and the story that one of the Founding Fathers created a recipe for spruce beer was too good to resist. Modern re-creations of the recipe credit him alone, not Hannah Glasse.
Spruce trees are ancient creatures, dating to the late Jurassic period, 150 million years ago. There are as many as thirty-nine species, depending on which botanist you ask, and they are distributed across colder climates in Asia, Europe, and North America. Like many conifers, the trees grow slowly and, if left unmolested by chainsaws, live to an astonishing old age. The world’s oldest living tree is a Norway spruce with a root system that dates back 9,950 years.
The trees produce ascorbic acid, and other nutrients that help fight scurvy and enhance uptake of vitamin C, as a defense mechanism in winter to help them survive the cold and develop seed cones. Highest levels of the vitamin are found in the red and black spruce (P. rubens and P. mariana), but the FDA has approved only black spruce and the white spruce, P. glauca, as safe natural food additives. To the untrained eye, spruce trees can resemble other, highly poisonous conifers such as the yew, so home brewers are advised to get expert advice before harvesting in the forest.
SUGAR MAPLE
Acer saccharum
aceraceae (maple family)
In 1790, Thomas Jefferson bought fifty pounds of maple sugar to sweeten his coffee. This was less a culinary decision than a political one: he’d been pressured by his friend and fellow signer of the Declaration of Independence, Dr. Benjamin Rush, to advocate for the use of home-grown maple sugar instead of cane sugar, which was dependent upon slave labor.
Although he was a slave owner himself, Jefferson nonetheless saw the wisdom behind this idea. He wrote to a friend, British diplomat Benjamin Vaughan, that large swaths of the United States were “covered with the sugar maple, as heavily as can be conceived,” and that the harvesting of maple sugar required “no other labor than what the women and girls can bestow . . . What a blessing to substitute a sugar which requires only the labor of children, for that which is said to render the slavery of the blacks necessary.”
The possibility of replacing slave labor with child labor was not the only reason early Americans were excited about maple sugar. It was seen as a rich and healthy sweetener—and in fact, maple syrup contains iron, manganese, zinc and calcium, along with antioxidants and a wide range of volatile organic flavors, giving it notes of butter, vanilla, and a warm, woodsy spiciness that is also found in spirits aged in oak. Although Dr. Rush, who also advocated temperance, would not have approved of it, maple syrup made a fine brew. A few people reported that they saw Iroquois people making a lightly fermented drink from the sap, although that would have been unusual for a northern tribe, where alcohol was uncommon before European contact. But settlers certainly got down to business: an 1838 recipe involved boiling down maple sap, mixing it with wheat or rye when barley was not available, adding hops, and aging it in casks after fermentation.
The sugar maple Acer saccharum is native to North America and one of about 120 species known around the world. Most maples are actually native to Asia (such as A. palmatum, the popular red-leaved Japanese maple), and while there are many European species, none yielded such a remarkably sweet sap. It wasn’t until settlers saw Iroquois tapping maple trees for sugar that they saw the potential.
The sugar maple tree is unique in that its sapwood—the outer part of the trunk that is still growing—contains hollow cells that fill with carbon dioxide during the day. On a cold night, the carbon dioxide shrinks, creating a vacuum that pulls sap up the tree. If the weather is warm the next day, the sap flows down again—and this is when maple farmers know to tap the tree. The sap is boiled to make syrup, and it can be further he
ated to turn it into granulated sugar.
Quebec is known for its maple tradition. A popular winter drink called the Caribou is made from wine, whiskey, and maple syrup. Maple-infused whiskey liqueurs and eaux-de-vie from the region are well worth sampling, as are maple wines and beers. Vermont turns out good maple spirits, too, including a fine maple vodka from the endlessly inventive Vermont Spirits, a distillery that has also helped keep Vermont dairies in business with its Vermont White, a vodka distilled from milk sugars.
CARIBOU
3 ounces red wine
1½ ounces whiskey or rye
Dash of maple syrup
Shake all the ingredients over ice and strain. One variation on this recipe involves equal parts port and sherry, a splash of brandy, and a dash of maple syrup. Experiment at will, but please use real maple syrup, not the imitation.
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fruit
Fruit: the ripened ovary of a flower, formed after ovulation, generally consisting of a fleshy or hard outer wall surrounding one or more seeds.
Apricot | Black Currant | Cacao | Fig | Marasca Cherry | Plum | Quandong | Rowan Berry | Sloe Berry | Citrus
GROW YOUR OWN
Black Currants | Cherry Tree | Sloes | Citrus
APRICOT
Prunus armeniaca
rosaceae (rose family)
Pour yourself a glass of amaretto and you’ll recognize the flavor immediately: almonds. Right? Not necessarily. The world’s most popular amaretto, Amaretto di Saronno, gets its almond flavor from the pits of apricots.
Just as almonds may be sweet or bitter—the bitter varieties containing high levels of amygdalin, which turns into cyanide in the gut—apricot pits are also classified as sweet or bitter. Most varieties grown in the United States are cultivated for their fruit, and their pits are the bitter variety. But in the Mediterranean, it is easier to find so-called sweet pit or sweet kernel varieties. Split open the hard pit of a sweet variety and the kernel inside—the seed—looks and tastes much like the closely related sweet almond.
The apricot was cultivated in China around 4000 BC; by 400 BC, farmers were selecting specific varieties. It arrived in Europe over two thousand years ago. There are hundreds of varieties now, many of them uniquely adapted to a specific region. One of the oldest sweet kernel cultivars is Moor Park; it dates to at least 1760 in England. The most popular cultivar before Moor Park was called Roman. It was actually developed in ancient Rome.
The tradition of flavoring alcohol with apricots seems to have begun about ten minutes after the introduction of the apricots themselves. Some of the earliest recipes for ratafia call for soaking apricot kernels in brandy with mace, cinnamon, and sugar. The invention of amaretto was not far behind; many of them are still made with apricot kernels rather than almonds. In France, the word noyau (or the plural, noyaux) refers to the pit of a stone fruit, and in practice a liqueur of that name is typically made with apricot pits. Crème de noyaux turns up in old cocktail recipes but is nearly impossible to find in the United States. The French distiller Noyau de Poissy makes two versions, but a trip to France may be required to secure a bottle.
The fruit itself is, of course, also used to make brandy, eau-de-vie, and liqueurs; in Switzerland, apricot spirits are called abricotine. Under the modern usage of the word brandy, a spirit called apricot brandy would be distilled from the apricots themselves. But in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, apricot brandies and peach brandies were made from grape-based brandy with fruit juice added. In fact, a 1910 case involving adulterated apricot brandy made with imitation ingredients was one of the early enforcement actions taken under the U.S. Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. This historical detail is of some importance to cocktail enthusiasts attempting to re-create Prohibition-era drinks: a recipe calling for apricot brandy (or peach brandy, for that matter) might actually refer to something more like a sweet liqueur than a dry, higher-proof brandy.
VALENCIA
In 1927, the International Bartenders Union gathered in Vienna for a cocktail competition. The winner was a German bartender named Johnnie Hansen, whose drink was a mixture of apricot brandy, orange juice, and orange bitters. The European bartenders sent the news to the United States with a tip of the hat to the Anti-Saloon League, thanking it for its work to advance the cause of Prohibition, which would only bring more drinkers to Europe.
The Valencia made it into the classic 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book. Here it is with an Austrian liqueur made from actual apricots. Freshly squeezed juice is, of course, essential.
1½ ounces Rothman & Winter Orchard Apricot Liqueur
¾ ounce freshly squeezed orange juice
4 dashes orange bitters
Orange peel
Shake all the ingredients except the orange peel over ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with the orange peel. The Savoy Cocktail Book calls for pouring it into a highball glass and topping it with a dry sparkling cava or Champagne. Even better, perhaps, is a variation suggested by Erik Ellestad, a cocktail writer whose Savoy Stomp blog (savoystomp.com) documented his journey through the entire Savoy Cocktail Book. He recommends equal parts (¾ ounce each) orange juice, apricot liqueur, and Armagnac, with Angostura instead of orange bitters, then topped with cava.
BLACK CURRANT
Ribes nigrum
grossulariaceae (syn. saxifragaceae) (gooseberry family)
Writing in the twelfth century, St. Hildegard recommended the leaves of the cassis plant as a cure for arthritis. “If one suffers from the gout,” the abbess, botanist, and philosopher wrote, “take in equal part cassis leaves and comfrey, crush them in a mortar, and add the grease of wolf.” While mixing the plant with wolf grease was one way to cure one’s ills, mixing it with alcohol proved far more popular. Black currants—called cassis in France—are the sole flavoring in the dark red, syrupy sweet liqueur known as crème de cassis.
The European black currant is not native to Dijon, France—it comes from colder northern European countries and parts of northern and central Asia—but farmers in Dijon perfected the art of coaxing the plants into producing smaller fruit with a deeper, richer color and a more intense flavor.
Apart from medieval remedies, the earliest liqueur made from the fruit was ratafia de cassis, a mixture of brandy and black currants that was allowed to soak for six weeks, and then was strained and blended with a sugar syrup. Today, crème de cassis is made by crushing the fruit and macerating it in straight alcohol—usually a neutral grape spirit—for two months. Then the fruit is pressed to expel the remaining juice and strained. The liqueur is piped into another vat, then mixed with beet sugar and water to adjust the sweetness and get the alcohol to about 20 percent ABV.
A one-quart bottle might contain the extract of just under a pound of fruit. In the case of higher-end “supercassis” liqueurs, the amount of fruit is doubled or tripled to make a thicker and fruitier drink. To judge the quality of a bottle of crème de cassis, shake it and observe how the liqueur coats the glass. A supercassis will leave behind a thick, burgundy-colored syrup. Cooks in Dijon don’t just drink it; they also pour it over fromage blanc and use it in bœuf bourguignon.
Crème de cassis enjoyed a boost in popularity in the late nineteenth century. It was common in French cafés to simply place a bottle on every table and let patrons add it to their own drinks. After World War II the mayor of Dijon, Félix Kir, poured a drink for visiting dignitaries that consisted of crème de cassis and white wine. The drink, which became known worldwide, is now called a Kir in his honor.
The true medicinal uses of black currants became better known around that time as well. With oranges in short supply in Britain during and after World War II, a black currant juice called Ribena was distributed free to children. High in vitamin C, antioxidants, and other healthy compounds, it kept many children from malnutrition. The fruit is still marketed as a “superfood” that may have a number of disease-fighting benefits.
Black currants, and the liqueurs
made from them, are not well known in the United States, owing in part to a strange quirk in the agricultural laws. The plant acts as host to a disease called white pine blister rust that kills eastern pine trees. The disease cannot spread from one pine tree to another; it must first make a stop on a currant bush, where it produces a particular kind of spore that allows it to reinfect a pine tree. In the 1920s, the timber industry lobbied to have the currant banned, in spite of the fact that simple forest management practices could have interrupted the disease cycle. The spores can travel up to 350 miles from pine tree to currant bush but can only travel a thousand feet from currant bush back to pine tree. This makes it fairly simple to stop the disease from spreading; foresters simply have to keep the currants at least one thousand feet away from the trees. It also helps that at least 20 percent of pines are naturally resistant, and the rest will only become infected if the weather is particularly damp when the spores are traveling.
The ban was lifted nationwide in 1966, but many states kept the restriction in place. Cornell agriculturalist Steven McKay, who had fond memories of currants from his travels in Europe as a student, has worked to abolish the restriction and encourage farmers to grow the crop. Now disease-resistant varieties, modern fungicides, and a better understanding of how the disease is transmitted make blister rust a thing of the past. Still, several states on the East Coast continue to outlaw the growing of currant bushes.