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Dessert

Maple Syrup

A sweet syrup made from sugar, water, vanilla, and corn cobs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Maple Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sugar base

  1. Heat 1 pint of sugar in a dry skillet, stirring until it turns brown.

  2. Add 1 cup of water and boil until it reaches the right thickness.

  3. Stir in 1 teaspoon of vanilla.

Make the corn cob syrup

  1. Boil 6 corn cobs in 1 quart of water for 2 hours.

  2. Strain the water over 1 pint of sugar and boil to make a syrup.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Vanilla + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and, when heated dry, browns into caramel flavour and colour.
Corn cobs
Release corn flavour and natural sugars into the cooking water, giving the syrup its base taste.
Vanilla
Adds a warm aroma that rounds out the sweetness.

The step that matters

Browning the dry sugar. Dry sugar melts and caramelises as it heats, and stirring keeps it from scorching in spots. Once it passes a deep brown, the caramel turns bitter, so the colour must be watched closely.

“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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