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Dessert

Honey Caramels

A caramel confection made from sugar, glucose, honey, and cream.

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

Make the caramel

  1. Combine sugar, glucose, honey, and ½ gallon of cream in a large pot.

  2. Cook over medium heat until the mixture reaches a medium ball stage.

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

Set

  1. 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
Provides the bulk of the sweetness and the structure that firms as the mixture cooks.
Glucose
Interferes with sugar crystals forming, keeping the caramel smooth and chewy rather than grainy.
Honey
Adds sweetness and moisture, and keeps the caramel soft.
Cream
Adds fat and milk solids, giving the caramel a creamy, tender texture.

The step that matters

Cooking to the hard ball stage over low heat. Sugar concentration rises as water evaporates, so the final firmness depends on how far the mixture is cooked. Stopping early leaves the caramel soft and sticky, while cooking too far makes it hard and brittle. Low heat helps control this after the cream is added.

“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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