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Dessert

Butter Cups

A sweet treat made by boiling sugar, butter, and molasses until hard, then poured onto buttered tins and shaped into squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Butter Cups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Combine sugar, butter, and molasses in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture until it hardens in water.

Set and cut

  1. Pour the mixture onto buttered tins.

  2. Crease the mixture into squares and let it harden.

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. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + molassestop 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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and, as it cooks, the hard brittle structure of the candy.
Butter
Adds fat, richness and a smooth texture to the cooked candy.
Molasses
Adds dark color, deep flavor and extra moisture that affects how the candy sets.

The step that matters

Boil until it hardens in water. Sugar candy sets according to how far its water has boiled off and how hot the syrup gets. Too little cooking leaves a soft, sticky candy that will not hold its shape, while overcooking makes it bitter or brittle.

“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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