Sorghum Syrup

Sweet sorghum, a tall grass grown for its sugary stalk juice, came into wide cultivation in the United States in the nineteenth century and took firm root in Appalachia, where cane sugar was expensive and hard to come by. For generations it was the primary sweetener of the rural South, holding that place until cheap refined sugar spread after the Second World War. Crucially, sorghum syrup is not molasses: true molasses is a byproduct of refining tropical sugarcane, while sorghum is the cooked-down juice of a different, frost-tolerant grass, with its own sharper taste. Fall syrup-making was a communal event much like hog-killing — neighbors shared the cane mill and cook pan and gathered to work and socialize.

Pourable but viscous, the color of dark honey shading toward brown, with a glossy sheen. The taste is sweet but layered — earthy and grassy underneath, with a tangy, almost sour edge and a faint mineral bitterness that keeps it from cloying. It is noticeably more assertive than maple syrup and sharper than sugarcane molasses. On a hot buttered biscuit it melts into the crumb, sweet and tart at once.

Syrup-making is controlled evaporation: the thin, sugary cane juice is boiled in a shallow open pan with huge surface area so water flashes off fast while the sugars concentrate. Constant skimming removes the green plant froth and impurities that rise, keeping the syrup clear and clean-tasting. The ratio runs about ten gallons of juice to one of finished syrup, and the cook must pull it at exactly the right density — too thin and it sours or ferments, too far and the sugars scorch and turn bitter. Timing is judged by sheeting off a paddle and by color, a skilled and watchful job.