The Story Behind New Hampshire's Aptly Named Maple Hurricane Sauce

Maple syrup — real maple syrup, not Aunt Jemima or Mrs. Butterworth's — is like no other food product in existence. We enjoy it on pancakes, waffles, French toast, and pretty much any sweet breakfast bread product. If you've never had real maple syrup, please, treat yourself, because you absolutely will not regret it. And in America, one region is associated with maple syrup to the exclusion of everywhere else: New England, particularly the more northern states like Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire.

One of the best-known types of maple syrup products comes from New Hampshire: maple hurricane sauce. A mixture of three ingredients — maple syrup, butter, and apples — maple hurricane sauce is, while still mostly regional, an ingredient starting to make cultural inroads across the country. But where did it come from originally? The answer is right there in the name: It was developed in direct response to a natural disaster in the early 20th century.

People who aren't from New England may not think of hurricanes when they think of the region, in part because the headlines about states being ravaged by storms are typically about the American South. But New England and Eastern Canada are home to their own particular breed of cyclones, as anyone who lives there could tell you: nor'easters. Usually accompanied by heavy rain or snow, nor'easters tend to batter these areas during the winter months from November to March.

It was one such storm that directly led to the creation of maple hurricane sauce. In the first half of the 20th century, Wilfred and Polly Dexter owned and operated Polly's Pancake Parlor in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire, using ingredients they grew themselves on their farm. In 1938, a nor'easter swept through, knocking apples off trees — meaning they were likely to go bad unless they were used immediately. The couple decided to cook them with maple syrup and melted butter to see if customers would go for it — and boy, did they. Today, maple hurricane sauce is considered one of the signature food items of the state.

Though Americans immediately think of New Hampshire or Vermont every time maple syrup comes up in conversation, the largest producer of the product by far isn't in the U.S. No, if you want to thank anywhere for the ready supply of the sweet stuff, you're going to be saying thanks to Quebec, which produces 70% of the world's total. Then again, maybe this shouldn't surprise anyone considering the Canadian flag literally features a maple leaf.

The origins of maple syrup generally, meanwhile, go back a long, long way. It turns out maple syrup is more American than, well ... most Americans. We don't know the exact date of its invention or anything (and there are multiple, probably apocryphal stories to lean on), but we know that maple syrup was originally a creation of the indigenous peoples of North America, specifically in the Northeastern United States and Canada. From there, European colonists eventually adopted the practice, adding significant amounts of sugar and overhauling the refining process. From maple syrup, we got many new variations of the classic food, including maple hurricane sauce.