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Maple Nut Fudge

A sweet fudge made with brown sugar, milk, maple cream, butter, and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Nut Fudge

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine brown sugar, milk, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Drop a small amount of the mixture into cold water. If it hardens, the mixture is done.

  4. Stir in maple cream and nuts.

  5. Set the pan in cold water.

  6. Stir until the mixture thickens to a mush-like consistency.

  7. Pour the fudge onto buttered pans.

  8. Allow to cool.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + nutstop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Provides the sweetness and the caramel-like flavor that forms the base of the fudge.
Milk
Adds moisture and dissolves the sugar so the mixture can cook into a smooth candy.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, tender texture and rich flavor.
Maple cream
Adds concentrated maple flavor to the fudge.

The step that matters

Stirring while the mixture cools. Stirring after the cooked mixture has cooled in cold water controls sugar crystal formation. Stir too early or too little and the fudge can turn grainy or stay too soft to set.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Pecansfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, cream, butter, walnut. 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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