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Dessert

Butter Scotch

A candy made from coffee, sugar, butter, cream of tartar, lemon extract, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Butter Scotch

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the candy

  1. In a saucepan, combine the coffee and sugar and enough cold water to dissolve it.

  2. Boil the mixture without stirring until it snaps in cold water.

Flavor, pour and mark

  1. Once done, add the lemon extract.

  2. Pour the mixture into well-buttered pans to a thickness of ¼ inch.

  3. When partly cool, mark off into squares.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Coffee a sugar
Dissolves and cooks into a hard, brittle candy base that gives the sweetness and set.
Butter
Greases the pans and adds richness and a smoother, softer bite to the candy.
Cream of tartar
Adds mild acidity that helps keep the sugar from crystallizing into a grainy texture.

The step that matters

Boil without stirring until it snaps in cold water. Sugar syrup's final texture depends on how far it cooks. Stirring can trigger sugar crystals that make the candy grainy, so the mixture is left undisturbed and tested in cold water to judge when it has reached the hard, brittle stage.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coffee, sugar, butter, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, sugar, butter, cream. 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.

More butter scotch recipes

Pie 26Candy 12brittle 4Filling 3Squares 3 See all 152 →

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