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Maple Cream

A frozen maple and cream dessert with chopped nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Maple Cream

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 Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Combine maple syrup, egg yolks, and cream in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over low heat, stirring until the mixture is smooth.

Cool and freeze

  1. Remove from heat and let it cool.

  2. Once cooled, stir in the chopped nuts.

  3. Freeze the mixture until solid.

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. Maple syrup + nutstop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together67 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Maple syrup + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together607 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  4. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Maple syrup + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 and maple flavour of the cream.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as they cook and add richness to the cream.
Cream
Supplies fat for a smooth, rich texture after freezing.
Chopped nuts
Add crunch and a toasty contrast to the smooth cream.

The step that matters

Cooking over low heat while stirring. Egg yolks can scramble if heated too fast. Gentle heat and constant stirring thicken the custard smoothly, so it does not curdle or turn grainy.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (maple syrup, cream, egg):

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Walnutfits about as well
  3. Nutsthe original
  4. Almondfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against maple syrup, cream, 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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