Maple Syrup
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
40 free Maple Syrup trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Maple syrup looks simple in the bottle, but it takes a cold winter, a short thaw and a great deal of boiling to get it there. Every year, producers in eastern Canada and the northeastern United States tap their trees and race the weather to turn thin, barely sweet sap into one of the world's most prized pantry staples. This quiz covers the whole story: what maple syrup is made with, how sap flows and how it is collected, what happens in the boiling room, how syrup is graded, and the foods and traditions built around it. It also dips into history, from its earliest makers and the settlers who copied them to a warehouse theft that made headlines around the world, plus the imitation syrups that crowd supermarket shelves. The questions suit curious pancake lovers as much as seasoned sugar makers. Each answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave knowing a little more about what you pour on breakfast.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which US state has long been the country's largest maple syrup producer, making about half the national crop?
Vermont
Vermont leads a country that made most of the world's maple syrup until the 1930s; most now comes from Canada, chiefly Quebec.
Q 02A mysterious maple syrup smell over New York City from 2005 was traced to a factory processing which seeds?
Fenugreek
Fenugreek seeds, a common flavouring in imitation maple syrup, were being processed at a factory in neighbouring New Jersey. Some New Yorkers had feared the sweet smell was chemical warfare.
Q 03In New England, soft maple taffy is traditionally served with doughnuts, coffee and which sour food?
Dill pickles
Dill pickles are served because their sourness counters the intense sweetness of the candy, as does the coffee.
Q 04Thieves in Quebec's great maple syrup heist refilled the drained barrels with what before returning them?
Water
Water went into the barrels after the thieves siphoned off the syrup, and the barrels were then trucked back to the warehouse. Almost 3,000 tonnes worth C$18.7 million was taken.
Q 05Quebec's maple syrup reserve, used to support world prices, was likened by The Economist to which organisation?
OPEC
OPEC was the comparison because the producers' group stockpiles barrels in rural warehouses to steady supply and prices. In 2021 it released 50 million pounds to meet demand.
Q 06Which tree, the state tree of New York and Wisconsin, supplies most of the sap boiled into Canada's famous syrup?
Sugar maple
Sugar maple sap is roughly two to five per cent sugar, a high content that makes it the syrup maker's first choice. Trees are usually tapped from 30 to 40 years of age.
Q 07On average, how many gallons of maple sap are boiled down to make one gallon of maple syrup?
About 40
About 40 is the usual average, because fresh sap is mostly water with only a few per cent sugar. Weak or sweet sap can push the figure anywhere from 20 to 100.
Q 08In which Asian country is maple sap, called gorosoe, traditionally drunk rather than boiled into maple syrup?
South Korea
South Korea also makes a little maple syrup, as does Japan, yet almost all of the world's supply comes from Canada and the United States.
Q 09Log Cabin, a pancake syrup brand introduced in 1887, was named in honour of which American president?
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the childhood hero of grocer Patrick Towle, who named his syrup after the log cabin the president was famously raised in.
Q 10Most American pancake syrups sold as cheap stand-ins for maple syrup are made mainly from which crop?
Corn
Corn syrup, often the high-fructose kind, is the usual base. The first imitations of the late 1800s were flavoured with boiled extracts of maple wood, hickory or corn cobs.
Q 11What is the usual English name for a cabane à sucre, the cabin where maple sap is boiled into syrup?
Sugar shack
Sugar shack dining halls now feed crowds each year, pairing fresh syrup with ham, baked beans, scrambled eggs and pancakes.
Q 12What is the name of the small spout driven into a tapped maple tree to let the sap run out?
Spile
Spile is also the word for the peg that vents a cask of ale. Early settlers used wooden ones, each with a wooden bucket hung beneath to catch the sap.
Q 13Which two months are the busiest at eastern Canada's maple syrup cabins, when the sap becomes available?
March and April
March and April bring the freezing nights and thawing days that make sap flow, and the first fortnight of April is usually the peak of collection.
Q 21Many large maple syrup producers save fuel by using which process to remove water from sap before boiling?
Reverse osmosis
Reverse osmosis machines, adopted in the 1970s, separate water from the sugar at high pressure, so far less boiling is needed afterwards.
Q 22Finished maple syrup must reach a density of 66 degrees on which scale used for sugar solutions?
Brix
Brix readings are also relied on by honey and fruit-juice producers, and in Canada syrup must hit the mark to be marketed as maple syrup.
Q 23Which French explorer was described by royal cosmographer André Thevet drinking maple sap on his Canadian voyages?
Jacques Cartier
Q 14Maple taffy is made by pouring hot, boiled-down maple syrup onto a clean bed of what?
Snow
Snow chills the molten syrup so quickly that it thickens into a soft candy, which is then lifted with a small wooden stick or a fork.
Q 15Which sugar makes up almost all of the sugar content of maple syrup?
Sucrose
Sucrose, the sugar in ordinary table sugar, accounts for about 99 per cent of maple syrup's sugars, with a little glucose and fructose created by the heat of boiling.
Q 16Which 2024 comedy series starring Margo Martindale is loosely based on Quebec's great maple syrup heist?
The Sticky
The Sticky was produced by Jason Blum and Jamie Lee Curtis and reached Prime Video in December 2024, twelve years after the real theft was discovered.
Q 17Which colour class of Grade A maple syrup, the lightest of the four, is labelled as having a delicate taste?
Golden
Golden maple syrup tends to come from sap gathered early in the season. Later runs give the darker, stronger-tasting classes that are used mostly for cooking and baking.
Q 18Which meat tops the maple-glazed doughnut that became a breakfast craze in parts of the United States and Canada?
Bacon
Bacon and maple together have been likened to a whole camping breakfast in one bite, and the doughnut has been counted as part of the food craze nicknamed bacon mania.
Q 19Which American reform movement favoured maple sugar over cane sugar in the years before the Civil War?
Abolitionists
Abolitionists chose maple because most cane sugar and molasses were produced by enslaved people in the South. Lucretia Mott handed out maple candies wrapped in anti-slavery messages.
Q 20Which machine, first patented in 1858, do maple syrup makers use to turn sap into syrup?
Evaporator
Evaporator design leapt ahead in 1872 with a two-pan model over a metal firebox. Around 1900, makers folded the pan floor into flues to boil sap faster still.
Jacques Cartier's taste of sap came long before Europeans took up the trade: settlers and fur traders were harvesting maple products by 1680.
Q 24In a popular legend about the origin of maple syrup, sap replaces water in a pot cooking which meat for a chief?
Venison
Venison simmered in sap is only a legend, though: there are no authenticated accounts of how maple syrup making actually began.
Q 25Pouding chômeur, a Quebec cake usually baked under hot maple syrup, was created during which period of hardship?
The Great Depression
The Great Depression gave the dessert its name, which means unemployed man's pudding. The batter rises through the hot syrup, leaving a layer of sauce at the bottom of the pan.
Q 26Oreilles de crisse, the salty, crunchy side dish of Quebec's maple-season feasts, are deep-fried pieces of which meat?
Pork
Pork fatback is salted and deep-fried for the dish, whose name translates as ears of Christ. Its saltiness offsets a meal otherwise laden with syrup.
Q 27Maple syrup is low in most micronutrients but notably high in riboflavin and which mineral?
Manganese
Manganese is the standout, yet maple syrup is still about two-thirds carbohydrate with no appreciable protein or fat.
Q 28Maple syrup urine disease, named for the sweet smell it causes, stops the body breaking down certain what?
Amino acids
Amino acids called leucine, isoleucine and valine build up to toxic levels, and the syrupy odour can be noticed in a newborn's earwax around 12 hours after birth.
Q 29What do maple syrup producers call a forest stand of maple trees that is tapped each year for sap?
Sugar bush
Sugar bush canopies are dominated by maples, and once tapping ends some fill with spring wildflowers that use the sunlight before the leaves emerge.
Q 30Which tree gives a syrup far pricier than maple syrup, needing roughly three times as much sap per litre?
Birch
Birch syrup can cost up to five times as much as maple, because the sap is far less sweet and so much more of it has to be boiled away.