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Dessert

Montmorency Maple Sugar Candy

A candied mixture of maple sugar, dark brown sugar, cream, and walnuts boiled until thick and poured into buttered tins.

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 ↓

Montmorency Maple Sugar Candy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve the maple sugar and cream together in a warm area.

  2. Place the mixture on the fire and boil rapidly and evenly.

  3. When it begins to pop and thicken, remove it from the heat.

  4. Stir constantly to cool it down and clear the sides of the saucepan.

  5. Add the walnuts and pour the mixture into two buttered layer cake tins.

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. Cream + walnuttop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Sugar + walnuttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,147 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Maple sugar
Provides the main sweetness and flavour, and dissolves with the cream to form the candy base.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the candy a softer, creamier texture.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty contrast to the soft candy.

The step that matters

Stir constantly while cooling. Stirring while the mixture cools encourages fine sugar crystals to form, giving a smooth, creamy texture. If left unstirred, large crystals can form and the candy turns grainy.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe 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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