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Maple Creams
3 Cups Maple Syrup 1 Pound Grated Maple Sugar 1 Cup Thick, Sweet Cream Boil the sugar and cream to "soft ball" stage; beat with a silver fork until of the consistency of very thick cream. Pour into greased tins and when cool, cut into squares. A cup of chopped nuts may be added, when the mixture begins to thicken.
A maple fudge in the old style, cooked entirely by stage rather than by clock. The written method is slightly at odds with the ingredient list, which is the first thing to sort out.
- The ingredient list vs. the methodThree cups of syrup, a pound of sugar and a cup of cream are listed, but the instruction says only to boil "the sugar and cream." Read it as everything in the pan together: there is nothing else in the recipe for the syrup to do.
- Soft ball, in numbers238F/114C on a candy thermometer, or a spoonful dropped in cold water that forms a ball you can flatten between your fingers. This is the hinge of the whole recipe. A few degrees over and you get a crumbly, sandy block; a few under and it will not set at all.
- Grated maple sugarNineteenth-century maple sugar came as hard cakes or loaves that had to be grated. Modern granulated maple sugar is the direct equivalent, weighed the same. Do not substitute brown sugar, which will make it taste of molasses rather than maple.
- Thick, sweet cream"Sweet" means unsoured, as opposed to the sour cream a farm kitchen also had on hand. Heavy or whipping cream at 36 percent or more is what is wanted; light cream or half-and-half gives a softer set.
- The silver forkAny wooden spoon or silicone spatula does the job. Let the mixture cool to about 110F before you start beating, and beat until it loses its gloss and stiffens noticeably.
- Pan and yieldThis makes roughly two and a half to three pounds of candy. An 8x8-inch pan, buttered, gives squares about three-quarters of an inch thick; a 9x13 gives thinner, more delicate pieces.
- Nuts, and timing themWalnuts are traditional with maple. Add them at the point the beaten mass begins to hold its shape, as directed any earlier and the heat draws oil out of them; any later and the candy has already set past the point of folding.
- Watch the boil-overSyrup, sugar and cream together foam high. Use a heavy pan at least three times the volume of the mixture and stir only until the sugar dissolves, then leave it alone.
Maple confectionery belongs to the sugar-bush regions of the northeastern United States and eastern Canada, where the late-winter boil produced far more sugar than syrup for most of the nineteenth century sugar kept and travelled, while syrup did not. Hard maple loaves were grated as needed, which is why this recipe calls for grated sugar rather than granulated. Recipes like this one, combining sugar and syrup with cream and beating the result, reflect the spread of fudge-making technique through American home kitchens in the 1890s and 1900s; fudge is generally traced to women's college kitchens in the 1880s, and within a couple of decades it had become a standard accomplishment for a home cook.