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Dessert

A Good Taffy

A sweet candy made by boiling molasses and butter, adding vinegar, and pulling until brittle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,513 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

A Good Taffy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the taffy

  1. Boil the molasses and butter together until it begins to thicken.

  2. Add the vinegar and cook until it is brittle by testing in cold water.

Shape and pull

  1. Pour onto plates and when partly cool, pull it using buttered or floured hands.

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. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Molasses + vinegartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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 the dark color, rich flavor, and chewy body of the taffy.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the taffy tender and prevents it from sticking as it cools.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps prevent sugar from crystallizing, keeping the texture smooth.

The step that matters

Cooking until brittle. Taffy must reach the hard-crack stage to set firm enough to pull. Stopping early leaves it sticky, while overcooking makes it hard and difficult to work. Testing a small drop in cold water shows when it is ready.

“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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