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Maple Pecan Sauce
Boil 3/4 cup maple syrup and 2 tablespoons butter to 232 degrees F. or until syrup forms a very soft ball when tried in cold water. Remove from fire, and add slowly 1/4 cup cream. Keep hot over hot water until ready to serve, then add 1/3 cup pecan nut meats.
A three-ingredient dessert sauce that behaves like candy-making, because it is: the syrup is cooked to the soft-ball stage before the cream goes in. A thermometer removes all the guesswork.
- The hinge: add the cream slowlyThe recipe already has you off the fire, but cold cream meeting syrup at 232F will still boil up sharply and may separate. Let the pan stand a moment, then dribble the cream in while stirring.
- 232F and the cold-water testSoft ball is 234-240F in most modern candy charts, so 232F gives a deliberately loose sauce rather than a fudge. A candy or instant-read thermometer works; the cold-water test (a dropped bead that flattens between the fingers) is the alternative the original offers alongside it.
- Pan sizeUse a saucepan at least three times the volume of the syrup. Maple syrup foams high as it approaches the soft-ball stage, and 3/4 cup in a small pan will climb over the rim.
- "Keep hot over hot water"That is a double boiler, or a heatproof bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water. Direct heat will carry the sugar past soft ball and stiffen the sauce in the pan.
- CreamHeavy or whipping cream, roughly 36 percent fat. Half-and-half or milk will thin the sauce and is likelier to curdle against the hot sugar.
- Maple syrupAny grade works; the darker grades (formerly Grade B, now Dark or Very Dark) give more maple flavor after boiling. Pancake syrup, which is corn syrup with flavoring, will not set at the same temperature or taste the same.
- Nuts last, and toastedAdding the pecans only at serving keeps them crisp rather than soft in the hot syrup. Toasting them dry for 6-8 minutes at 350F first is a small improvement the original does not call for.
- YieldAbout one cup, enough for four to six servings over ice cream, steamed pudding or plain cake. It thickens as it cools and can be rewarmed over hot water with a spoonful of cream.
A sauce like this one turns on technique more than provenance: the sugar work is done in advance, the pan sits over hot water, and the nuts go in at the last moment. The technique is straight candy-making \ ball and then let down with cream is essentially uncooked maple fudge caught before it sets \ and it reflects how much cooked-sugar knowledge a household cook was expected to carry, since domestic-science schools taught the cold-water stages alongside boiling and baking. Maple syrup and pecans together read as emphatically American; both were domestic products, of the Northeast and the South respectively.