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Dessert

Maple Creams

Maple creams are a sweet candy made from dark brown sugar, maple syrup, cream, and optional walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Maple Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fudge

  1. In a saucepan, combine dark brown sugar, maple syrup, and cream.

  2. Boil the mixture until it forms a ball when dropped in cold water.

  3. Remove from heat and beat until it begins to thicken.

  4. For added flavor, mix in chopped walnuts before cooling.

Set and cut

  1. Pour the mixture into buttered tins and let it cool.

  2. Once cool, cut 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Maple syrup + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Sugar + maple syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,252 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

Dark brown sugar
Provides the bulk of the sweetness and the caramel-like flavor of the candy.
Maple syrup
Adds sweetness and a distinct maple aroma.
Cream
Adds fat, giving the candy a softer, smoother texture.
Chopped walnuts
Add crunch and a toasted, nutty flavor contrast to the soft candy.

The step that matters

Beating after removing from heat. Beating while the mixture cools causes sugar to crystallize quickly, which sets the texture. Beat too little and the candy stays soft and sticky; beat too long and it may set grainy or too hard before it can be poured.

Swap the walnut

The recipe marks walnut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, maple syrup, cream, butter):

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, maple syrup, cream, butter. 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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