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Dessert

Butter Taffy

A chewy candy made from sugar, water, butter, vanilla, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Butter Taffy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the taffy

  1. Combine the sugar, water, and cream of tartar in a kettle.

  2. Stir until it begins to boil.

  3. Add the vanilla extract.

  4. Boil until it reaches the hard crack stage.

  5. Stir in the butter until well combined.

Set and cut

  1. Pour the mixture onto buttered platters or pans.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

  3. Cut into squares.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Vanilla + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Light brown sugar
Provides the bulk of the sweetness and the caramel flavor and color of the taffy.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, smooth bite to the finished candy.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the syrup, helping prevent sugar crystals from forming and keeping the texture smooth.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be heated evenly into a clear syrup before cooking.

The step that matters

Boil until it reaches the hard crack stage. Taffy sets firm only when the sugar syrup is cooked to the hard crack stage. Stopping early leaves it soft and sticky, while going too far can make it brittle and burnt-tasting.

“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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