Name: How to Keep Maple Syrup Sweet
Ingredients: 1 quart maple syrup; 1 teaspoon butter

Why it works: Maple syrup and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,084 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

How to Keep Maple Syrup Sweet

Ingredients

1 quart maple syrup
1 teaspoon butter

Directions

Put the maple syrup over the fire.
When it boils, add the butter.
Stir well and let it boil for a moment.
Transfer to a jar or bottle for storage.

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.

Maple syrup + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,084 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Maple syrup: Provides the main sweetness, flavor, and liquid base of the dish.
Butter: Adds richness and a smoother, softer mouthfeel to the syrup.

“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.