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Dessert

Burnt Sugar Candy

A candy made by caramelizing sugar with milk, butter, and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Burnt Sugar Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Burn 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar in a pan.

  2. Slowly add 2-3 cups of milk and 1 2-3 cup of granulated sugar.

  3. Add butter and cook until it forms a soft ball in cold water.

Set and finish

  1. Remove from heat and let it set in cold water for 3 minutes.

  2. Beat until creamy and add 2-3 cup of nuts just before pouring into a pan.

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. Walnut + nutstop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + walnuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Milk + nutstop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together982 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar
Provides the sweetness and, once burnt, the deep caramel flavor that defines the candy.
Milk
Adds moisture and dissolves the sugar so the cooked mixture stays smooth and soft.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the candy tender and creamy rather than brittle.
Nuts
Add crunch and contrast to the soft, creamy candy.

The step that matters

Beating until creamy. Beating the cooled mixture controls sugar crystal size, which sets the texture. Beat too little and it stays runny; beat too long once it stiffens and it can set too hard before pouring.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, butter, walnut. 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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