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Dessert

Butter Taffy

A sweet candy made by boiling sugar, water, and cream of tartar, then adding butter and flavoring.

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. In a kettle, combine sugar, water, and cream of tartar.

  2. Heat over medium heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves and begins to boil.

  3. Add vanilla or your chosen flavoring and boil until it reaches the "crack" stage.

  4. Add the butter, either melted or in pieces, and stir until fully incorporated.

Shape and cut

  1. Pour the mixture onto a greased marble surface.

  2. Once cool enough to handle, fold in the edges and cut into square tablets.

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. Cream + vanillatop 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

Sugar
Forms the sweet, firm body of the taffy as it cooks down.
Cream of tartar
Acidity that helps keep the sugar smooth rather than grainy.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender, rich texture and buttery flavor.
Vanilla or other flavoring
Adds aroma and flavor to the finished taffy.

The step that matters

Boiling to the crack stage. Cooking the sugar syrup to the crack stage sets how firm the taffy will be. Too little cooking leaves it soft and sticky, while too much makes it hard and brittle.

“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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