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Dessert

Canadian Maple Cream

A sweet custard made from fresh cream, maple sugar, and walnuts, cooled on a buttered plate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Canadian Maple Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the maple cream

  1. Combine the fresh cream and maple sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture until it can form a soft ball when dropped into a cup of cold water.

  3. Stir as little as possible while cooking.

Finish and set

  1. Add the chopped walnuts.

  2. Beat the mixture until it begins to sugar.

  3. Pour the mixture onto a buttered plate 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Fresh cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the cream a smooth, rich texture.
Maple sugar
Provides the sweetness and flavor, and forms the sugar structure as the mixture cools and crystallizes.
Chopped walnuts
Add crunch and nutty flavor against the smooth, creamy base.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture until it begins to sugar. Beating after the boil lets sugar crystals form in a controlled way, creating a smooth, fine-grained texture. Beating too early or too long can make the candy grainy or hard to pour.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Filbertfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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