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Dessert

Chocolate Caramels

A sweet candy made by boiling sugar, butter, chocolate, and water to a hard ball stage, then cooling and cutting into squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Caramels

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Combine sugar, butter, grated chocolate, and warm water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture without stirring until it reaches the hard ball stage (it will snap in cold water).

Set and cut

  1. Pour the mixture into a pan and let it cool slightly.

  2. Once it is cool enough to handle, score it 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. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Butter + chocolatetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,543 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides the sweetness and, as it cooks, the firm structure of the caramel.
Butter
Adds fat for a soft, rich texture and smooth mouthfeel.
Grated chocolate
Adds chocolate flavour and some fat to the caramel.

The step that matters

Boil without stirring until hard ball stage. Sugar syrup that is stirred can crystallise, leaving a grainy texture. Cooking to the hard ball stage matters because it sets the firmness of the finished caramels; stopping early leaves them soft and sticky, while overcooking makes them brittle.

“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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