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Dessert

Butternut Candy

A candy made from maple and white sugar, cream, butter, and butternut meats.

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 ↓

Butternut Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Combine maple sugar, white sugar, cream, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture until it hardens in water.

  3. Stir in the butternut meats.

  4. Pour the mixture into a buttered tin.

Finish

  1. 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 + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + butternuttop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together59 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

Maple sugar
Provides the main sweetness and maple flavour of the candy.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture set firm when boiled.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the candy a softer, creamier texture.
Butternut meats
Adds nutty flavour and texture as broken pieces through the candy.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it hardens in water. Sugar candy sets according to how far its syrup has cooked. Boiling too little leaves it soft and sticky, while boiling too long makes it hard and brittle. The water test shows when it has reached the right concentration.

Swap the butternut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Filbertfits better
  3. Pecansfits better
  4. Butternutthe original

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