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Dessert

Chocolate Caramels

A sweet treat made by boiling sugar with butter, cream, and chocolate until hard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

Chocolate Caramels

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Boil the sugar in a pot until it reaches a candy stage.

  2. Add the butter, cream or milk, and grated chocolate.

  3. Let it boil slowly without stirring until it drops hard in water.

Set and cut

  1. Pour the mixture onto buttered plates.

  2. Cut into squares before it hardens.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + chocolatetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,543 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the sweet base, and its cooking stage sets the caramel's final chew or firmness.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture and a softer bite.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and milk solids for a creamy, chewy texture.
Baker's chocolate
Adds cocoa flavor, color and some fat to the caramel.

The step that matters

Boil without stirring until it drops hard in water. Sugar syrup firms as its temperature rises. Stopping at the right stage gives a chewy caramel, while overcooking makes it hard and brittle and undercooking leaves it soft and sticky.

“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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