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Chocolate Caramels

Chocolate caramels made with sugar, molasses, chocolate, milk, butter, and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Chocolate Caramels

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, molasses, chocolate, milk, and butter.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring until the mixture reaches a soft ball stage.

Set and cut

  1. Remove from heat and stir in nuts.

  2. Pour into a greased pan and let cool before cutting 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. Chocolate + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Chocolate + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides sweetness and, as it cooks, the firm body that sets the caramel.
Molasses
Adds deep flavor, darker color, and moisture to the caramel.
Chocolate
Adds chocolate flavor and color to the caramel.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness to the texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer, more tender bite.

The step that matters

Cooking to the soft ball stage. Stopping too early leaves the caramels soft and sticky, while cooking too long makes them hard. Stirring over medium heat keeps the mixture from scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, molasses, chocolate, milk, egg, butter):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Peanutfits about as well
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, molasses, chocolate, milk, egg, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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