wintergreen, black currant, and banana nougat with birch syrup glass
I finally received my package of birch syrup. It was a long wait as it had to come from Alaska. You would think that with all of the birch trees in the northeast, that someone around here would be producing it. If they are, they're keeping it for themselves...I can't blame them.
Like maple syrup, Birch syrup is made by concentrating and evaporating tree sap into a syrup. But that's where the similarity ends. It takes 100 gallons of birch sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. With maple syrup, its about 40:1. Birch syrup is less sweet than maple and is predominantly low-glycemic fructose as opposed to maple, which is mainly sucrose.
Birch syrup has a deep, spicy, woody flavor that is tinged with methyl salicylate.
Methyl salicylate is an ester commonly known as oil of wintergreen or betula oil. Esters are a class of aromatic organic compounds that are widely found in nature and are usually described as "fruity". Esters follow a general formula (alcohol + carboxylic acid = ester), therefore (methyl alcohol + salicylic acid = methyl salicylate). Names of esters always end in -ate.
Methyl salicylate is found in high concentrations in the berries and leaves of wintergreen (Gaultheria) and birch (Betula)and in lesser degrees in black currants, cherries, tomatoes, licorice root, fig leaf, pansies and dianthus. It is the prominent flavor of root beer and birch beer.
The primary ester in banana is isoamyl acetate, but bananas also share other esters with black currants: ethyl caproate and ethyl benzoate, which is described as fruity, sweet, wintergreen.
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