I grew up thinking that shagbark hickory syrup was an alchemist's elixir. Unknown by most, it was remembered with equal parts desire and awe by the only person I knew to have experienced it: my father.
"That was some mighty fine eating," he would say. So fine that, although he could no longer find this delight of his youth, he eschewed any other syrup, even the pure Vermont maple I brought home from my first trip to New England. "That's nice, but awful sweet," he said, setting the bottle aside. "Have I ever told you about hickory syrup?"
He died with his craving unfulfilled, but I kept the search alive. I met a few people who had tasted this memorable substance—even some who could tell me that it wasn't actually made from hickory sap, but was a sugar syrup flavored with the bark of a certain type of hickory tree. But which tree, and what the formula for making it might be, no one could say. Certainly no one knew where I might actually find some. Eventually I gave up.
And that, of course, is when it appeared—on a shelf in a food co-op in Bloomington, Indiana. I could barely wait to pay and get out of the store. I opened the bottle as soon as I was outside and sipped from it as I drove. The flavor imparted by the infusion of bark was both sharp and buttery in contrast to the liquid sugar, and a little smoky as well. It had what my mother would have called "a whang" to it, and this whang was exactly what got you hooked. I immediately began searching for a pancake house along the road.
I thought that buckwheat, with its rich, sour tang, would be the perfect foil, but I was wrong—the two sharp flavors competed. At home I tried adding rice to the batter (too delicate), then oats (better), but it wasn't long before I found the ultimate match, pancakes made with half flour and half cornmeal. I made the batter thin, almost crêpe-like, which brings out a hidden delicacy in the syrup, a flowery undertone.
I looked forward to those corn cakes every morning with delight—and anxiety as the graceful, curving glass bottle I'd bought began approaching empty. Before it was gone, I called the producer, Hickoryworks, in Trafalgar, Indiana.
Sherrie Yarling and her husband, Gordon Jones, produce and bottle the syrup at their farm outside Indianapolis. In the early 1990s, the couple began growing shiitake mushrooms to sell to regional restaurants. Not long after, they met an 89-year-old man who had a recipe, handed down from his great-great-grandmother, for making hickory syrup. Suspecting that the unusual regional product would appeal to the same inventive chefs who were buying their mushrooms, Yarling and Jones began the labor-intensive process of gathering the bark, then extracting, straining, and aging the syrup.
They will tell you that the bark is from the shagbark hickory tree (Carya ovata) and that, like a snake, the tree sheds its skin. But as for proportions, times, and the kind of sugars in the syrup? Those are secret. Everyone knows that a real alchemist never reveals the formula.
Shagbark hickory syrup is available from Hickoryworks (317-878-5648).
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