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 Cream for Counter
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 240°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the syrup
Combine maple sugar, cream of tartar, and water in a pot.
Cook over medium heat until it reaches a soft ball stage (about 240°F or 115°C).
Cream and set
Remove from heat and let it cool until almost cold.
Use a spatula to cream the mixture in a basin until it looks cloudy.
Quickly pour it into a deep pan.
Once cold, remove it from the pan and cut into bars or large squares.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Maple sugar
- Provides the main sweetness and flavor, and forms the body of the candy.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidity that helps prevent large sugar crystals from forming, keeping the texture smooth.
- Water
- Dissolves the sugar so it can be heated evenly into syrup.
The step that matters
Creaming the mixture. Stirring the cooled syrup encourages many small sugar crystals to form, giving a smooth, creamy texture. Pouring too late or stirring while it is still hot can produce a grainy or hard result.
“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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