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Dessert

Soft Toffee

Soft toffee made from sugar, condensed milk, butter, milk or cream, flavored, boiled, poured into greased tin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Condensed milk and milk work together. They rank in the top 61% of all ingredient pairs. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Soft Toffee

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add condensed milk, sugar and milk (or cream).

  3. Boil up, and let it continue to boil for twenty-five minutes.

  4. Stir in the flavouring.

  5. Pour into a greased tin.

By Hamilton, Margaret. 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. See the original page.

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. Condensed milk + milktop 61% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together0 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

Condensed milk
Provides sweetness and a thick, creamy body that sets into a soft toffee texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, and helps the sugars dissolve and cook into a smooth mixture.
Butter (in the method)
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture in the finished toffee.

The step that matters

Boiling for twenty-five minutes. The sugar concentration rises as water evaporates, so the time at the boil sets the final firmness. Too short leaves the toffee soft and sticky, while too long makes it hard and grainy.

“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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