Over the years I have, like many Trinidadians, enjoyed my share of cold frosty mauby. As I’ve previously written ^[1], it was something that my Aunt always seemed to have in her fridge when I was a child. Those days however are long gone. My aunt no longers bother to make mauby and even at home my parents prefer, like others, to buy bottles of concentrate, replete with artificial flavours and insane amounts of added sugar.
To be fair making mauby can be extremely time-intensive, however if one plans accordingly it is pretty easy, failproof, and needs little to no maintenance until you are ready to bottle. If you are interested in trying your hand at making mauby you can check out my mauby drink recipe ^[2] (one for fizzy mauby is in the works as well). Really, there is no comparison between the ‘real thing’ and those sugary syrups!

In the years since i first posted my mauby drink recipe, several readers have commented or written me regarding the purported health benefits of mauby bark.

As a result I have looked up some additional information on that drink that so many of us love.

1. (From WiseGeek.com ^[3])The drink or syrup for the drink is made by boiling a specific buckthorn bark, Colubrina elliptica, with sugar and a variety of spices.

2. (From BBCCaribbean.com ^[4]) A new study appears to give support to an earlier one that mauby might be useful in lowering blood pressure. It was conducted by Trinidad-born Kwame Amin, a student at The City University of New York’s Borough of Manhattan Community College. Mr Amin’s work won him the first prize at the 2009 Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students in the United States.

N.B. Several online articles erroneously claim that coconut milk and mauby work to lower blood pressure. The actual study ^[5] clearly states that coconut water (NOT milk) was the effective addition.

3. If you are taking blood-thinning medication mauby may not be something you should have on a regular basis. (From the Barbados Advocate ^[6]) “If you use a combination of Warfarin and mauby or garlic or any other synergising agent were you to be wounded you could bleed incessantly.”

Well there you go! Three additional mauby facts. I hope that one or more were new to you In addition to my Mauby recipe ^[2] you may also want to give Simply Trini Cooking’s own ^[7] a try. Enjoy!

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