The Old-Fashioned Secret of Holiday Treats?

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HERE in sugar cane country, cooks don’t always reach for the sugar bowl to add a little sweetness to a dish. Janice Bourgeois Macomber, who insists that even people she has just met call her Aunt Boo, adds a spoonful of amber-colored cane syrup to cut the acid in her court bouillion, a tomato sauce that she uses to simmer redfish. And for a quick dessert, she sloshes syrup over thickly buttered white bread, then folds it over to make what kids here call a “diaper sandwich.” “I always have two things in my icebox,” she said. “Beer and cane syrup.” Cane syrup, a caramelized, concentrated version of pure cane juice, is one of the basic flavors of southern Louisiana, where about half the sugar cane in the United States is grown (Florida, Texas and Hawaii make up the rest).