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Dessert

Maple Candy

A confection made by cooking maple syrup, sugar, and butter until hard, then cooling and cutting into pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Maple Candy

Why it works: Walnut and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,832 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Maple Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the mixture

  1. In a saucepan, combine maple syrup, granulated sugar, and butter.

  2. Cook over medium heat until the mixture hardens.

Set and cut

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pan.

  2. Allow to cool completely before cutting into pieces.

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. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Maple syrup + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Maple syrup + sugartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,252 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 maple flavor and much of the sweetness.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it cooks down, helps the candy set firm.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer texture.

The step that matters

Cooking until the mixture hardens. Sugar syrups set according to how far their water has cooked off. Stopping too early leaves the candy soft, while cooking too long can scorch the sugars and turn the candy bitter or brittle.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Cashew nutfits about as well

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