Why it works: Maple syrup and nuts work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 67 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓
Maple Filling
Ingredients
Directions
In a saucepan, combine sugar and maple syrup.
Boil the mixture until it can spin a thread.
Slowly pour the hot syrup over the beaten egg whites while continuously beating.
If desired, add chopped nuts.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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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Maple syrup + nutstop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together67 recipes
Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
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Sugar + maple syruptop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,252 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Maple syrup + eggtop 24% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,156 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
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Sugar + nutstop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,228 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sugar
- Sweetens the filling and, when boiled to thread stage, sets into a firm, stable structure.
- Maple syrup
- Adds sweetness and maple flavor, and its sugars cook with the sugar to form the syrup.
- Egg whites
- Whipped into a foam that gives the filling its light, airy structure.
The step that matters
Slowly pour the hot syrup over the beaten egg whites while continuously beating.. Hot syrup partly cooks the egg white proteins and stabilizes the foam. Pouring slowly while beating keeps the foam from deflating and spreads the syrup evenly, avoiding streaks and clumps.
Swap the nuts
The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, maple syrup, egg):
- Pecansfits better
- Walnutfits about as well
- Nutsthe original
- Almondfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, maple syrup, egg. 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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