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Sauce

Maple Sugar Sauce

A sauce made by dissolving maple sugar with hot water, then adding butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Maple Sugar Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Crack the maple sugar into very small bits to help it dissolve quickly.

  2. Simmer the sugar and hot water for a few moments until clear.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the small pieces of butter until melted.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce into a sauceboat and serve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Maple sugar
Provides the sweetness and maple flavor that form the body of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy texture as it melts into the sauce.
Hot water
Dissolves the sugar so it forms a smooth, pourable liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer until clear. Simmering only a few moments dissolves the sugar fully; stopping too early can leave grains, while over-boiling can thicken the sauce too much or make it grainy as it cools.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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