Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Butter Scotch
Ingredients
Directions
Make the candy
Combine sugar, water, and butter in a saucepan.
Boil without stirring until the mixture hardens on a spoon.
Set
Pour the mixture onto buttered plates to cool.
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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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).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sugar
- Forms the candy's structure and sweetness as it cooks and hardens.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, giving the candy a softer, smoother bite.
The step that matters
Boil without stirring until the mixture hardens on a spoon. Sugar syrup must reach a high enough temperature to set firm when cooled. Stirring can trigger crystallization, leaving the candy grainy instead of smooth, so the mixture is left undisturbed while it boils.
“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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