Name: Maple Syrup Sauce
Ingredients: ½ pound maple sugar; ½ cup cream or rich milk; 1 teaspoon butter (if using milk)

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Maple Syrup Sauce

Ingredients

½ pound maple sugar
½ cup cream or rich milk
1 teaspoon butter (if using milk)

Directions

Dissolve the maple sugar in the cream or rich milk.
If using milk, add the butter and stir until combined.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together29,399 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Maple sugar: Provides the sweetness and the maple flavor that defines the sauce.
Cream or rich milk: Adds fat and body, giving the sauce a smooth, rich texture.
Butter: Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel when used with milk.

“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.