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Dessert

Chocolate Caramels

Chocolate caramels made by boiling brown sugar, milk, molasses, chocolate, and butter until hard, then poured into tins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chocolate Caramels

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Combine brown sugar, milk, molasses, chocolate, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture until it hardens when dropped in cold water.

Set the caramels

  1. Pour the mixture into buttered tins and let it cool.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Chocolate + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,543 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Provides sweetness and, as it cooks, the caramel flavor and color.
Milk
Adds moisture and fat that give the caramels a soft, chewy texture.
Molasses
Adds depth, dark color, and moisture to the caramel.
Chocolate
Adds chocolate flavor and richness to the caramel.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender bite.

The step that matters

Boil until the mixture hardens in cold water. Sugar candies as water evaporates and the sugar concentration rises. Too little cooking leaves the caramels soft and sticky, while overcooking makes them hard and brittle. Dropping a little into cold water shows the firmness reached.

“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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