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Dessert

Maple Sugar Candy

A sweet candy made from maple sugar, cream, salt, and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 candy

  1. Dissolve the maple sugar in a little water over medium heat.

  2. Add the cream and boil until it forms a thread when dropped from a spoon.

  3. Stir in the broken nuts.

  4. Place the kettle in a bowl of cold water and stir the mixture until it thickens.

  5. Pour into buttered pans to a depth of 1 inch.

Cool and set

  1. Once cool, mark into squares and let harden.

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).

  2. Sugar + butternuttop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Cream + butternuttop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Maple sugar
Forms the sweet base of the candy and sets into a firm, crystalline texture as it cools.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the texture of the candy as it is boiled and stirred.
Butternut or walnut meats
Adds crunch and nutty flavor that contrasts with the smooth candy.

The step that matters

Stirring while the mixture cools in cold water. Stirring off the heat lets sugar crystals form fine and evenly, so the candy thickens into a smooth, creamy mass rather than setting into large, grainy crystals or hard lumps.

Swap the butternut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Butternutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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