Maple syrup, butter and other tales of refrigeration

Daniel Neman, St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Jun 2, 2025

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I was making my favorite type of spiced nuts for a party, and I realized I needed maple syrup.

Maple syrup is the key ingredient in these nuts, along with brown sugar, orange juice, chipotle powder, fresh rosemary, orange juice, brown sugar and an assortment of increasingly expensive nuts.

These spiced nuts are spectacular, but they ain’t cheap.

Chipotle powder I had, but I did not have maple syrup. I went to the store, bought some maple syrup, and made the nuts. They were, incidentally, a hit.

I grumbled to my wife that someone had finished off the maple syrup, and she — with more faith in me than I clearly deserve — apologized.

Later, she found a bottle of maple syrup in the refrigerator, right where she had put it. But I hadn’t looked in the fridge because maple syrup does not need to be refrigerated.

That is when she read to me the words on the front of the bottle: “Refrigerate after opening.” And the same words were on the bottle of the different brand that I had bought, too.

This was news to me, and I write about food. As the song says, I’ve stored maple syrup at room temperature all my life and I ain’t dead yet.

We’re not talking here about the maple-flavored corn syrup that I grew up with. That one doesn’t have to be refrigerated, and it says “refrigeration not required” right on the bottle, so naturally internet experts say it has to be refrigerated.

Not that one. When I first set off on my own, I decided that I was going to use real maple syrup. It’s an indulgence, but not much of one because I do not use it often.

Real maple syrup, of course, is just highly reduced tree sap, so it makes sense that mold can grow on it if it is kept unrefrigerated. But never, in all my decades of cooking and keeping syrup in the pantry, have I ever seen it happen.

I have friends who keep butter on their counter at all times. The first time I encountered it, I was appalled. I had always gone by the rule that whatever is refrigerated at the store needs to be refrigerated at home.

And yet, my friends have been keeping butter (covered) at room temperature their whole lives, and they ain’t dead yet, either.

Apparently, the Food and Drug Administration used to have a webpage stating that you can safely store butter at room temperature for a few days, but that it eventually may start to taste rancid.

That webpage has now disappeared, and I wouldn’t want to begin to guess why. But there are other knowledgeable websites, including some that cite the erstwhile FDA page, that say you can safely store butter at room temperature for a few days.

Some, like my friends, say they’ve never had the butter turn rancid. Maybe it takes longer than the FDA used to recommend, or maybe they just go through a stick of butter so fast that it doesn’t become a problem.

But what about eggs? In many countries, they don’t refrigerate eggs, and they consume them in complete safety. (Note: Do not stop reading here. Be sure to read the next paragraph).

Eggs can be kept either refrigerated or unrefrigerated, but never both. If an egg has been refrigerated at any point in its post-chicken existence, including at the packing facility, on a refrigerated truck or at a store, it will only stay bacteria-free if it continues to be refrigerated.

Condensation created when a refrigerated egg warms to room temperature can allow salmonella to penetrate the shell, according to the Egg Safety Center.

So what about milk? In most countries of the world, milk is not refrigerated. It’s true.

In America, milk is pasteurized at 161 degrees or more for at least 15 seconds. According to the milkheads at Ohio State University, that process kills 99.999% of the pathogens to be found in it. The few microbes that are left won’t cause the milk to spoil for several days.

But in other countries, they pasteurize milk at 280 degrees for 2 seconds. That is hot enough to kill every microbe, and then it is packaged in almost completely sterile conditions. That makes the milk safe to drink, unrefrigerated, for several months.

I’m sure it’s true, and it makes total sense. But I don’t think I want to try it.