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Dessert

Caramel Fudge

A sweet confection made from sugar, milk, butter, and caramelized sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Caramel Fudge

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fudge

  1. Bring 2 cups of sugar and 1 cup of milk to a boil in a saucepan.

  2. Add the caramelized sugar and cook until it reaches the soft ball stage.

  3. Add 2 tablespoons of butter just before removing from heat.

Set and shape

  1. Cool the mixture undisturbed.

  2. Beat vigorously until it loses its glossy appearance.

  3. Pour into a buttered pan.

  4. Mark into squares.

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. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the fudge and, when caramelized, adds deeper toasted flavor.
Milk
Provides moisture and dairy richness for a creamy, soft texture.
Butter
Adds fat for smoothness and a rich mouthfeel in the finished fudge.

The step that matters

Beat vigorously after cooling. Beating too early or too little affects texture. As the cooked sugar cools, it forms tiny crystals; beating controls crystal size, so the fudge turns creamy rather than grainy or hard. Cooling undisturbed first prevents premature crystallization.

“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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