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Dessert

Cheaper Butter Scotch

A sweet candy made from brown sugar, butter, and lemon oil or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Cheaper Butter Scotch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the butterscotch

  1. Combine brown sugar and butter in a bright copper kettle.

  2. Place over medium heat and stir constantly until the sugar melts.

  3. Add lemon oil or vanilla extract when almost cooked.

  4. Boil until it reaches the crack stage.

Shape and wrap

  1. Pour onto a greased marble surface.

  2. Once cool enough, cut into small tablets or squares.

  3. Optionally wrap in wax paper or tinfoil.

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 + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Brown sugar
Provides the sweetness and the caramel flavor that defines butterscotch.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the candy set smooth and tender.
Lemon oil or vanilla extract
Adds aroma and flavor to the finished candy.

The step that matters

Boil until it reaches the crack stage. The sugar must reach the hard-crack range for the candy to set firm and brittle rather than sticky. Stopping early leaves it soft, while overcooking can scorch it and give a bitter taste.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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Pie 26Candy 12brittle 4Filling 3Squares 3 See all 152 →

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