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Dessert

Texas Chips

A brittle molasses-based chip made by boiling a molasses, water, butter, and sugar mixture until it hardens.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Molasses and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Texas Chips

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Combine molasses, water, melted butter, and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture until it becomes brittle when dropped in water.

Shape the chips

  1. Pour the mixture into buttered plates.

  2. As it cools, pull from the edges to form thin chips and snap off.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Molasses + buttertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,123 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Provides dark color, deep flavor, and sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and hardens into a brittle, crisp texture as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the chips a smoother flavor.

The step that matters

Boil until brittle in water. Sugar syrup must reach the hard-crack stage to set crisp. Stopping early leaves chips chewy or sticky, while cooking too long can scorch the molasses and make them bitter.

“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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