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Dessert

Chocolate Caramees

A sweet treat made by cooking milk, molasses, sugar, butter, and chocolate until brittle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chocolate Caramees

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Grate the chocolate and stir it into the boiling milk.

  2. Slowly add the molasses, sugar, and butter.

  3. Continue cooking until the mixture becomes brittle when dropped into cold water.

Set

  1. Pour the mixture into flat tins to cool.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, 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

Molasses
Adds dark color, deep flavor, and chewy body to the caramel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture set firm as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, tender texture in the caramel.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid base that cooks down into a creamy caramel.
Baker's chocolate
Adds chocolate flavor and dark color to the caramel.

The step that matters

Cooking until brittle in cold water. Caramel sets by temperature, not time. Cooking too little leaves it soft and sticky, while cooking too long can make it hard or burnt. Dropping a little into cold water shows when enough moisture has boiled off and the sugar has reached the right concentration.

“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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