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Dessert

Maple Sugar Candy

A hard candy made from maple sugar, cream of tartar, and water, cooled and twisted into sticks.

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 Sugar Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a large pot, combine maple sugar, cream of tartar, and water.

  2. Bring to a boil, then remove from heat and skim off impurities.

  3. Continue boiling and skimming, adding a little water as needed.

  4. Boil until the mixture is brittle when dropped in cold water.

Shape the candy

  1. Pour the mixture into buttered pans and let it cool enough to handle.

  2. Stretch the candy until it is as white as possible, then twist into small strings and break into sticks.

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. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 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 maple flavour, and forms the candy mass when boiled.
Cream of tartar
Acidic salt that helps keep the sugar smooth and prevents crystals from forming gritty texture.

The step that matters

Boil until the mixture is brittle when dropped in cold water. Sugar candy sets according to its final temperature, since more water boiled off makes it harder when cooled. Stopping too early leaves it soft and sticky, while overcooking makes it hard and bitter.

“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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