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Dessert

Maple Sugar Candy

A candy made from maple sugar, cream, boiling water, and nuts, cooked until a soft ball forms and then poured into tins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Maple Sugar Candy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Break the maple sugar into pieces.

  2. Put the sugar into a saucepan with the cream and boiling water.

  3. Bring to a boil and cook until a soft ball forms when tested in cold water.

  4. Remove from heat and beat until creamy.

  5. Add the nuts and pour into buttered tins.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Cream + walnuttop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Sugar + walnuttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Soft maple sugar
Provides the main sweetness and maple flavour of the candy.
Thin cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the candy a smoother, softer texture.
Walnuts or pecan meats
Adds crunch and a toasted nutty flavour that contrasts with the creamy candy.

The step that matters

Beat until creamy. Beating the hot syrup as it cools encourages very fine sugar crystals to form, which gives a smooth, creamy texture. Beating too early or too late can leave the candy grainy or hard to work with.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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.

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