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Dessert

Chocolate Caramels

A sweet caramel made with cream, brown sugar, molasses, butter, and chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chocolate Caramels

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. In a saucepan, combine the cream, brown sugar, molasses, and butter.

  2. Boil the mixture for 20 minutes.

  3. Add the grated chocolate and continue boiling until done.

Set and cut

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish.

  2. Once it reaches the right consistency, cut or mark 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

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

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and caramel flavour, and helps the mixture set chewy.
Molasses
Adds depth of flavour and a darker colour, and contributes to chewiness.
Rich cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the caramels a soft, smooth texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, less grainy texture.
Grated chocolate
Adds chocolate flavour and fat, deepening the richness of the caramel.

The step that matters

Boiling until done. Sugar and cream cook down as water evaporates, and the final consistency sets how firm the caramels become. Boiling too little leaves them soft and sticky, while boiling too long makes them hard. Judging doneness carefully matters most here.

“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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