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Dessert

Maple Caramels

Maple Caramels are made by boiling maple sugar, milk, and cream until a ball forms, then poured into a buttered pan and cut into squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 Caramels

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Boil the maple sugar, milk, and cream until the syrup forms a ball when dropped into cold water.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered shallow pan.

Finish

  1. Before it cools, cut it into squares.

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. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 flavour, and its sugars set into a firm, chewy candy as it cools.
Milk
Adds milk solids and moisture that give the caramel a softer, creamier texture.
Cream
Adds fat that makes the caramel rich and smooth rather than brittle.

The step that matters

Cutting before it cools. Once the boiled sugar mixture cools and hardens, it becomes too firm to cut cleanly, so the squares must be marked while it is still soft.

“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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