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Dessert

Maple Creams

A sweet maple glaze thickened with cream and walnuts, cooled and cut into squares.

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 ↓

Maple Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Melt maple sugar in a pan set in boiling water.

  2. Add cream and boil for 10 minutes.

Set and cut

  1. Pour mixture onto a well-buttered dish and spread with walnut meats.

  2. Once cool, cut into squares.

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

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

  3. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 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 sugar
Provides the main sweetness and, once cooled, sets the candy firm.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving a softer, smoother texture to the set mixture.
Walnut meats
Add a crunchy texture and nutty flavour that contrast with the soft, sweet base.

The step that matters

Boil the cream mixture for 10 minutes. Boiling evaporates water and concentrates the sugar. The mixture needs enough sugar concentration to set firm as it cools. Too short a boil leaves it soft, and too long can make it grainy or hard.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, meat, 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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