Name: Mary Elizabeth's Butter Scotch
Ingredients: 6 tablespoons Nectar drip; 2 tablespoons water; 1 tablespoon butter; 5 tablespoons granulated sugar

Why it works: Butter and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Mary Elizabeth's Butter Scotch

Ingredients

6 tablespoons Nectar drip
2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon butter
5 tablespoons granulated sugar

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Combine nectar drip, water, molasses, butter, and granulated sugar in a saucepan.
Cook the mixture over medium heat until it reaches the hard crack stage (300°F or 149°C) when tested in cold water.
Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto greased marble or wax paper 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.

Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked 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

Granulated sugar: Sugar dissolves and, cooked to hard crack, sets the candy firm and brittle as it cools.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavor to the candy.

The step that matters

Cooking to the hard crack stage. Hard crack is about 300°F (149°C). Below it the candy stays soft or sticky, and above it the sugar can darken and taste burnt. Testing in cold water shows when the sugar has lost enough moisture to set hard as it cools.

“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.