Why it works: Corn and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,927 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Butter Scotch
Ingredients
Directions
Make the butterscotch
Mix the syrup, sugar, butter, and lemon juice well in a saucepan.
Heat the mixture until it boils.
Set and cut
Once done, pour it onto buttered paper.
Cut into squares before it cools.
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.
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Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,927 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,227 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Provides the sweetness and, once cooked, the firm brittle body of the candy.
- Silver drip
- Syrup that keeps the sugar from crystallising, giving a smooth, non-grainy texture.
- Butter
- Adds fat and rich flavour, softening the set candy slightly.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps prevent sugar crystals.
The step that matters
Cut into squares before it cools. Once the boiled sugar mixture cools it hardens into brittle sheets that shatter rather than cut cleanly, so scoring must happen while it is still warm and pliable.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, sugar, egg, butter):
- Vanillafits better
- Coconutfits better
- Figfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against corn, sugar, egg, 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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