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Dessert

Maple Fudge

A sweet confection made from white sugar, light brown sugar, water, butter, and optional cream and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Maple Fudge

Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

Maple Fudge

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 235°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the fudge

  1. In a saucepan, combine white sugar, light brown sugar, water, and butter.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reaches the soft ball stage (around 235°F or 112°C).

Cool and set

  1. Remove from heat and beat the mixture until it cools.

  2. If the mixture is overcooked, add a little cream to adjust the texture.

  3. Optionally, stir in nuts before pouring into a mold.

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.

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.

  1. Butter + creamtop 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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cream + nutstop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

White sugar
Provides sweetness and the bulk of the sugar structure that sets into fudge as it cools.
Light brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavor to the fudge.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, tender texture and richer flavor.
Cream
Adds moisture and softens the texture when the mixture has been overcooked.

The step that matters

Boil to the soft ball stage. Sugar concentration rises as water boils off, so the final temperature controls firmness. Stopping too early gives a soft, runny fudge, while going too far makes it hard and grainy.

Swap the nuts

The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, butter, cream):

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

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