Sweet Nature: A Cook's Guide to Using Honey and Maple Syrup

A beautiful, delicious celebration of two natural sweeteners in irresistible recipes

Honey and maple syrup might be better for you than sugar. They might be better for the environment. But even better, and sweet as anything, is how these natural ingredients taste and the wonders they do for a dish. James Beard Award–winning cookbook author Beth Dooley and gifted photographer Mette Nielsen make the most of these flavors in this celebration of honey and maple syrup in traditional kitchens as well as cutting-edge food culture. 

Full of easy ideas that include honey and maple syrup in foods both savory and sweet, this book features a wide range of irresistible recipes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, for snacks and salads, condiments and vegetables, entrées and desserts, syrups, cocktails, and elixirs. Sweeten your table with rosemary honey butter, green tomato chutney, curry marinated herring, brown butter honey popcorn, savory maple black pepper biscotti, oven-roasted chicken thighs with pomegranate molasses, honey-glazed salmon salad, maple vanilla half-pound cake, elderberry throat coat, bourbon maple smash, and more. 

With its innovative recipes, practical tips, conversion charts, historical and scientific facts, information on nutritional value, suggestions for storage and sourcing, and above all Mette Nielsen’s remarkable photographs, Sweet Nature invites us to fully enjoy these two iconic ingredients from nature’s pantry.

Beth Dooley is a James Beard Award–winning author and coauthor of several cookbooks, including Savoring the Seasons of the Northern Heartland, The Northern Heartland Kitchen, Minnesota’s Bounty, The Birchwood Cafe Cookbook, Savory Sweet, and The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen (Best American Cookbook, James Beard Award, 2018), all from Minnesota. In Winter’s Kitchen is her memoir about finding her place in the Midwestern food scene. She lives in Minneapolis. 

Mette Nielsen’s photographs have illustrated numerous books, newspapers, and magazines. A talented master gardener, she created the edible garden for the Birchwood Cafe in Minneapolis, collaborated on The Birchwood Cafe Cookbook and Minnesota’s Bounty, and coauthored Savory Sweet.