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Dessert

Honey Caramels

Honey caramels made by cooking sugar, glucose, honey, and cream to hard ball stage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Honey Caramels

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, combine sugar, glucose, honey, and ½ gallon of cream.

  2. Cook over medium heat until it reaches a medium ball stage.

  3. Add another ½ gallon of cream and continue cooking over low heat until it reaches a hard ball stage.

  4. Pour the mixture onto a slab to cool.

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

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

  2. Sugar + honeytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,932 recipes

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

  3. Honey + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together738 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the main structure and sweetness as water evaporates and the mixture thickens.
Glucose
Interferes with sugar crystals so the caramel stays smooth rather than grainy.
Honey
Adds sweetness and moisture and helps keep the caramel soft.
Cream
Adds fat and milk solids that give a softer, richer, chewier texture.

The step that matters

Cooking to the ball stages. The caramel firms as its sugar concentration rises while water evaporates. Stopping at the wrong stage, or cooking too fast over heat, changes the final texture from soft to hard, so the stage must be judged carefully.

“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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