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Maple Fudge

A sweet confection made from maple sugar, hot milk, butter, and optional butternut meats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Maple Fudge

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Maple Fudge

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve the maple sugar in hot milk.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reaches the soft ball stage.

  3. When the mixture is partly cool, add the butter and heat for three minutes.

  4. If desired, add butternut meats.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + meattop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,703 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Maple sugar
Provides the sweetness and maple flavor that form the body of the fudge.
Milk
Dissolves the sugar and adds moisture for a creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the fudge smoother and richer.

The step that matters

Boiling to the soft ball stage. Sugar syrup must reach the right temperature to set into fudge. Boiling too short leaves it soft and runny, while boiling too long makes it hard and grainy.

Swap the butternut

The recipe marks butternut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, butter, meat):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Cocoafits better
  4. Butternutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, butter, meat. 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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