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Dessert

Old Fashioned Molasses Candy

Molasses candy made by boiling molasses, sugar, ginger, lime juice, butter, coconut, and orange peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,621 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Old Fashioned Molasses Candy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine molasses, sugar, ginger, lime juice, butter, grated coconut, and orange peel in a large pot.

  2. Boil the mixture slowly for 1.5 hours, stirring occasionally.

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. Ginger + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,621 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lime + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together934 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Lime + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together937 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Ginger + coconuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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, deep flavor, and sticky body that sets as the candy cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture thicken into a candy as the water cooks off.
Grated coconut
Adds texture and a chewy bite to the finished candy.

The step that matters

Slow boil with occasional stirring. Boiling slowly for a long time evaporates water and concentrates the sugars. Stirring prevents scorching on the bottom of the pot, which would give a burnt flavor.

Swap the lime

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, sugar, ginger, butter, coconut, orange):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, sugar, ginger, butter, coconut, orange. 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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