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Dessert

Butter Scotch Patties

A sweet candy made from sugar, glucose, water, butter, and salt, formed into patties.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Butter Scotch Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. In a copper kettle, combine sugar, glucose, and water.

  2. Cook over heat until the mixture reaches 300°F (150°C).

  3. Add butter and salt, stirring well to combine.

  4. Cool the kettle by placing it in a shallow pan of cold water for 1 minute.

Shape the patties

  1. Warm the pattie funnel slightly over the stove.

  2. Pour about 1 pint of the candy into the funnel.

  3. Dispense the candy onto a hard surface in quarter-sized pieces.

  4. Use a palette knife to loosen the patties as they cool.

Store

  1. Once cool, store the patties in jars.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the main body of the candy as it dissolves and hardens into a brittle sugar glass.
Glucose
Inhibits sugar crystallization, keeping the candy smooth and less grainy.
Butter
Adds fat for a softer bite and richer flavor in the finished candy.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture to 300°F (150°C). Cooking to this hard-crack stage determines how firm the patties set. Undercooked candy stays sticky and soft, while overcooked candy turns bitter 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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