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Caramel Paste

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sugar and condensed milk work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 804 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Caramel Paste

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve 4 lbs of potato flour in 1 gallon of cold water.

  2. Cook the mixture by steam or over a very slow fire until it reaches a medium ball stage (about 248°F).

  3. Pour the cooked mixture into a large tub.

  4. Add 60 lbs of glucose and 100 lbs of condensed milk to the tub.

  5. Stir well until combined and ready for use.

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 + condensed milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + condensed milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together410 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + potatotop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

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

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

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, condensed milk):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, condensed milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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