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Dessert

Molasses Candy

Molasses candy is a sweet treat made by cooking molasses, sugar, water, cream of tartar, and butter to a hard ball stage.

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 ↓

Molasses Candy

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 250°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the syrup

  1. Combine the yellow coffee sugar, molasses, water, cream of tartar, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Continue cooking without stirring until the mixture reaches the hard ball stage (about 250°F or 121°C).

Shape the candy

  1. Pour onto a buttered surface and let cool slightly.

  2. When cool enough to handle, pull and shape into candy.

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. Sugar + creamtop 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. Coffee + walnuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together289 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Yellow coffee sugar
Provides the main sweetness and the bulk of the candy's structure as it cooks.
Molasses
Adds deep flavour and a darker colour, and keeps the candy soft and chewy.
Cream of tartar
Acidity that helps keep the sugar smooth and prevents crystals from forming.

The step that matters

Cooking without stirring to the hard ball stage. Stirring once the sugar has dissolved can trigger crystallisation, leaving a grainy texture. Stopping at the target temperature sets the candy's firmness, so too low gives a soft result and too high gives a brittle one.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Cocoafits about as well
  3. Hazelnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, sugar, molasses, cream, 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 molasses candy recipes

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