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Dessert

Taffy

A chewy candy made by boiling butter and sugar, then pouring onto a buttered dish and cutting into squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Taffy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Add the sugar and stir well.

  3. Boil for 15 minutes, stirring constantly.

Set and cut

  1. Pour the mixture onto a buttered dish.

  2. Mark into squares while still warm.

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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, less brittle bite in the finished taffy.
Moist sugar
Provides sweetness and, once boiled and cooled, sets into the chewy texture of taffy.

The step that matters

Boil for 15 minutes, stirring constantly. Sugar can scorch on the base of the pan if it sits over heat without stirring. Constant stirring keeps the heat even and the mixture from burning, which would give a bitter taste.

“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.

More taffy recipes

Molasses 41Butter 29Vanilla 22White 19Cream 18Coconut 15 See all 27 →

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