Skip to main content
Dessert

Maple Puffs

Maple Puffs are sweet, airy confections made from maple sugar syrup, egg whites, and dried fruits, baked into small puffed cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Walnut and fig match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 373 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Maple Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the maple sugar, brown sugar, and water until it spins a heavy thread.

Make the puffs

  1. Beat the egg whites until very stiff.

  2. Gradually add the syrup to the egg whites while beating continuously.

  3. When the mixture begins to stiffen, add the chopped walnuts, figs, citron, and raisins.

  4. Beat until the mixture holds its shape.

  5. Place tablespoonfuls on greased paper and let stand until stiff.

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. Walnut + figtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together373 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Fig + raisintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Walnut + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + figtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten into a stiff foam that gives the puffs their light, airy structure.
Maple sugar
Cooked into a syrup that sweetens the puffs and sets firm as the mixture stiffens.
Brown sugar
Cooked with the maple sugar to add sweetness and a deeper caramel flavour to the syrup.
English walnuts
Add chopped texture and a nutty flavour throughout the puffs.

The step that matters

Gradually add the syrup to the egg whites while beating continuously. Pouring the hot syrup in slowly while beating lets it cook and stabilise the egg white foam. Adding it all at once can deflate the foam and leave the puffs dense.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, fig, raisin):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, fig, raisin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes