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Dessert

Maple Sugar Frosting

A frosting made from maple sugar, water, butter, thick sweet cream, and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

Maple Sugar Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the frosting

  1. Combine maple sugar, water, and butter in a basin.

  2. Boil the mixture until it will wax when dropped in water.

  3. Stir in the thick sweet cream and beat quickly to make it light.

  4. Set aside enough frosting to cover the top of the cake.

Add the walnuts

  1. Chop the remaining walnut meats finely.

  2. In the remaining frosting, mix in chopped walnut meats.

  3. Reserve half of the walnut meats to place around the edge of the cake.

  4. Allow the cake to cool before assembling.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + walnuttop 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

Maple sugar
Provides the main sweetness and maple flavour of the frosting.
Thick sweet cream
Adds richness and moisture, and beating it in makes the frosting lighter.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture in the frosting.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavour that contrasts with the soft frosting.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it will wax when dropped in water. Sugar must reach the right concentration to set into a frosting that holds its shape. Undercooked syrup stays runny, while overcooked syrup turns hard and grainy.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, 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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