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Dessert

Old-fashioned Molasses Candy

A candy made from molasses, butter, and baking soda, cooked until it snaps in water, then poured into buttered dishes and pulled until white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Molasses and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,123 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Old-fashioned Molasses Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Combine molasses and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat until the mixture snaps in water.

  3. Stir in the baking soda to lighten the color.

Shape and pull

  1. Pour the mixture into buttered dishes.

  2. Once cool enough, pull the candy until it turns white.

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. Molasses + buttertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,123 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

New orleans molasses
Provides the bulk of the candy and its deep, sweet, slightly bitter flavor.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the texture and keeps the candy from sticking to the pan.
Baking soda
Reacts with the hot molasses to lighten its color and create a porous, airy texture.

The step that matters

Cooking until the mixture snaps in water. Cooking to the right point controls the candy's final hardness. Too little cooking leaves it sticky and soft, while too much makes it brittle and prone to burning.

“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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