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Butter Scotch Candy

A brittle candy made by boiling butter, brown sugar, water, flavoring, and lemon juice or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Butter Scotch Candy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, greasing the sides well to prevent scorching.

  2. Add the brown sugar and enough water to moisten the mixture.

  3. Stir in a little flavoring and a few drops of lemon juice or vinegar.

  4. Boil until the mixture becomes brittle when tested in cold water.

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. Butter + sugartop 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 bulk of the candy and its sweetness and caramel flavor as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and greasing the pan helps prevent scorching at the sides.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds a little acidity, which helps keep the sugar from crystallizing too readily.

The step that matters

Boil until brittle in cold water. Sugar candy sets by how far its water evaporates and the sugar concentrates. Underboiling leaves a soft, sticky result, while overboiling can burn it and make it bitter. The cold-water test shows when the mixture has reached the right concentration.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar. 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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