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Dessert

Maple Sugar Candy

A hard candy made from sugar, water, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 Sugar Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Break the sugar and add 2 cups of water.

  2. Boil the syrup, adding a little water when it boils up.

  3. Remove from heat and skim off impurities.

  4. Continue boiling slowly without stirring until it becomes brittle in cold water.

Prepare the pans

  1. Prepare pans by buttering them.

  2. Pour a small amount into each pan.

  3. Cool quickly by placing the pans on ice or in water.

Pull and shape

  1. Pull the candy as soon as it can be handled.

  2. Pull back and forth with your hands until it is as white as possible.

  3. Twist into small strings and break into sticks.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Sugar
Forms the candy's body and sweetness, setting firm as the syrup cools.
Cream of tartar
Helps keep the sugar from crystallizing into a coarse, grainy texture.

The step that matters

Boiling without stirring until brittle in cold water. Stirring can trigger sugar crystals to form, making the candy grainy. The syrup must reach the right concentration, which is why the cold-water test is used to judge when it is ready.

“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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