Skip to main content
Dessert

Old-fashioned Molasses Candy

A chewy candy made from molasses, brown sugar, vinegar, butter, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Molasses and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Old-fashioned Molasses Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. In a saucepan, mix molasses, brown sugar, vinegar, and melted butter.

  2. Heat the mixture slowly to a boil, stirring constantly.

  3. Cook until a drop in cold water hardens immediately.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in a little boiling water and stir it into the mixture.

  5. Remove from heat immediately.

  6. Pour into buttered tins to cool.

Pull and cut

  1. Once cool, pull the candy while moistening your hands with butter or water.

  2. Continue pulling until it turns white and is hard enough to cut into sticks.

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. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Molasses + vinegartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 chewy body of the candy.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture set into a firm candy when cooked.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic mixture to lighten the candy and make it easier to pull.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that keeps the sugars from crystallizing too firmly.
Melted butter
Adds fat for a softer texture and helps keep the candy from sticking.

The step that matters

Remove from heat immediately. Sugar syrup keeps darkening and firming in residual heat, so once the cold-water test is reached it must come off the burner at once. Otherwise the candy can turn bitter and become too hard to pull.

“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 molasses candy recipes

Peanut 4 See all 242 →

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesMolasses Sponge CakeMolasses Sponge Cake9 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes