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Dessert

Maple Creams

A sweet confection made from sugar, maple syrup, water, corn syrup, cream of tartar, and salt, cooked to a soft ball stage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Maple Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fudge

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, maple syrup, water, corn syrup, cream of tartar, and salt.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reaches the soft ball stage, similar to making fondant.

  3. Knead the mixture until smooth and creamy.

Set and finish

  1. Mold it in a pan with a removable bottom and cut into cubes once solid.

  2. Optionally, dip the cubes in melted chocolate or leave them plain like fudge.

  3. Alternatively, melt the mixture like fondant and mold it like French creams.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Syrup + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + maple syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Maple syrup + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together151 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides the bulk of the sweetness and the structure that sets the fudge firm.
Maple syrup
Adds maple flavour and sweetness, and keeps the fudge softer and moister.
Corn syrup
Interferes with sugar crystallisation, keeping the fudge smooth rather than grainy.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the sugar syrup, helping prevent crystallisation and keeping the texture smooth.

The step that matters

Boiling to the soft ball stage. Sugar syrup must reach the right temperature to set correctly. Too little boiling leaves the fudge soft and sticky, while too much makes it hard and crumbly.

“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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