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Dessert

Butter-scotch

A hard candy made from sugar, water, vinegar, butter, lemon extract, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Butter-scotch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the toffee

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, water, vinegar, and butter.

  2. Boil without stirring until it reaches a hard crack stage.

  3. Just before removing from heat, add baking soda.

Pour and mark

  1. Pour into well-buttered biscuit tins to a thickness of ¼ inch.

  2. When partly cool, mark into 1-inch 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. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

White sugar
Forms the brittle, glassy candy structure as it cooks to hard crack.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps prevent sugar from crystallising, keeping the candy smooth.
Baking soda
Reacts with the hot syrup to lighten its colour and make it more brittle.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer flavour and a smoother, less sticky texture.

The step that matters

Boil without stirring until hard crack stage. Stirring can trigger sugar crystals to form, making the candy grainy. Reaching hard crack temperature gives a brittle set once cooled; stopping early leaves it chewy and sticky.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, 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.

More butter scotch recipes

Pie 26Candy 12brittle 4Filling 3Squares 3 See all 152 →

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