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Sauce

Maple Sugar Sauce

A maple syrup sauce thickened with flour and butter, flavored with nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Maple Sugar Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Simmer the maple syrup and skim off any foam.

  2. Cream the flour with the butter.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the creamed mixture and nutmeg to the syrup.

  2. Bring to a boil, then serve.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Maple syrup + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,084 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Maple syrup + nutmegtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 the characteristic maple flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells and sets when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the creamed mixture to the syrup. Flour and butter clump when dropped into hot liquid. Stirring the creamed mixture in smoothly and then bringing the sauce to a boil lets the flour starch hydrate and thicken evenly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against maple syrup, flour, butter. 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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