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Dessert

Plain Molasses Taffy

A chewy candy made by boiling sugar, butter, molasses, and glycerine to the crack stage, then cooling and pulling into sticks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

Plain Molasses Taffy

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, butter, molasses, and glycerine.

  2. Boil fast for 25 minutes, stirring frequently to prevent scorching.

  3. Cook until the mixture reaches the crack stage.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in cream of tartar while still boiling.

Set and pull

  1. Pour into buttered pans.

  2. When cool enough to handle, butter your fingers and pull into sticks.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Molasses + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,408 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

Molasses
Provides the dark color, deep flavor and chewy body of the taffy.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, with the syrup, forms the crystal-free structure of the candy.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps prevent sugar from crystallizing, keeping the taffy smooth.
Glycerine
Holds moisture in the candy, keeping the taffy soft and pliable.

The step that matters

Cook until the mixture reaches the crack stage. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration to set firm but still pull. Cooking too little leaves taffy sticky and soft, while cooking too long makes it hard and brittle. Stirring prevents scorching.

“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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