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Dessert

Dipped Maple Bonbons

Maple bonbons are sweet confections made from maple cream, maple sugar, egg whites, and optional coconut or walnut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 606 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Dipped Maple Bonbons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the centers

  1. Prepare 3 to 4 pounds of maple cream as for white centers.

  2. Cook 2 pounds of maple sugar to a soft ball stage.

  3. Whip the whites of 3 eggs into the sugar until it forms a stiff foam.

  4. When cold, roll into balls and dip them in the mixture.

Make the variations

  1. Dip English walnut halves in the maple cream.

  2. For another variation, mix 1 fresh grated coconut with 1½ pounds of powdered sugar to form a paste, roll into balls, and dip.

  3. Alternatively, cook 4 pounds of maple sugar with 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar, stir in 2 grated coconuts, pour onto a damp surface, cream it, and form into balls.

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 + coconuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Cream + coconuttop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,223 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Maple cream
Forms the soft, smooth fondant centers that the bonbons are built around.
Maple sugar
Provides the main sweetness and maple flavor, and sets to a firm candy when cooked.
Eggs
Whites whipped into the sugar create a light, stiff foam that gives the coating a airy texture.
Cream of tartar
Acidity helps keep the sugar smooth and prevents it from crystallizing too coarsely.

The step that matters

Cooking the maple sugar to a soft ball stage. Sugar must reach the right concentration to set into a creamy, soft-ball texture. Too little cooking leaves the centers runny, and too much makes them hard and grainy.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Macadamia nutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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