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Dessert

Honey Comb Chips

A sweet candy made from sugar, glucose, water, molasses, and sea salt, formed into thin chips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Honey Comb Chips

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 290°F (143°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the candy base

  1. Combine sugar, glucose, and water in a large pot.

  2. Cook until the mixture reaches 290°F (143°C).

  3. Add molasses and stir.

  4. Continue cooking until the mixture reaches 300°F (149°C).

  5. Add a little coarse sea salt.

  6. Pour the mixture onto a slab.

Pull and fold

  1. Pull the candy until it is pliable.

  2. Form the pliable candy around a club.

  3. Pull out about 4 feet of the candy.

  4. Fold the candy side by side.

  5. Repeat the folding three times, creating eight holes.

  6. Cut the batch in half at the center.

  7. Lay the halves side by side, making sixteen holes wide.

  8. Pull the candy out thinly.

Cut and finish

  1. Have a helper cut it into chips as you continue to cut.

  2. Once cooled, break apart the chips.

  3. Dip the chips as desired.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the main crisp, brittle structure of the candy as it cooks and hardens.
Glucose
Inhibits crystallization, keeping the candy smooth and preventing grainy sugar.
New orleans molasses
Adds deep flavor and color, and contributes acidity that helps soften the texture.

The step that matters

Cooking to 300°F (149°C). The syrup must reach the hard-crack stage. Undercooked candy stays sticky and will not set into brittle, while overcooking can scorch the molasses and taste bitter.

“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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