How To Tell If Grocery Store Maple Syrup Is Real By The Label

While some argue that the best French toast doesn't even need syrup, why not live a little and pour it on anyway? For that matter, drench your pancakes, use it in marinades, make maple syrup cornbread — it's so versatile, and the real thing has such an incredible depth of flavor that you can hardly believe it started out as sap from a tree. That's the real stuff, anyway, the good stuff. There is also the fake maple syrup, or pancake syrup, which is just corn syrup with flavoring — maple flavoring — but flavoring nonetheless. So how do you tell the real stuff from the fake when you don't have time for a deep dive into label reading?

Real maple syrup is only going to have one ingredient listed. Pure maple syrup, maple syrup, and maple sugar are all indicative of the high-quality real thing, and when you scan to the ingredients section of the label, one of those will be the only words you see. Real maple syrup is desirable not only because of its superior texture and taste, but also because it actually contains vitamins and minerals, as well as antioxidants (albeit in low quantities).

One of the biggest differences between pure maple syrup and the fake stuff is how it's made. The former goes through a pretty involved process where sap is collected and boiled down, with how long it is boiled affecting how dark the color and how deep the flavor. In contrast, pancake syrup (the fake stuff) is manufactured in a food plant from a variety of natural and artificial ingredients, namely corn syrup.

As mentioned, pure maple syrup may come in a variety of colors, depending on how long it was boiled. Pancake syrup, on the other hand, tends to be pretty uniformly one color, a dark, burgundy-tinged brown. There's also the thickness of the syrup: While pure maple syrup tends to be a little runny, pancake syrup is more concentrated and gooey. Finally, because of the work involved in making pure maple syrup, as well as the incredible 40:1 ratio of sap to finished product (even in a good maple tapping year, that's a small ratio), it tends to be a lot more expensive than pancake syrup.