Skip to main content
Dessert

Molasses Candy

Molasses candy is a sweet made by boiling molasses and sugar, then adding butter, cream of tartar, baking soda, and optional nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream 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

  1. Combine molasses and sugar in a pot and boil, stirring every minute.

  2. When the mixture is partly cooked, add the butter.

  3. To test if it's done, drop a small amount into cold water; if it hardens, it's ready.

  4. Add the cream of tartar and baking soda just before removing from heat.

  5. If desired, mix in nut meats before pouring out the 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. Butter + creamtop 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. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. 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

Molasses
Provides the dark color, rich flavor and bulk of the candy base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture set into a firm candy as it cooks.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the syrup, helping prevent crystallization and keeping the candy smooth.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic syrup to release gas, lightening the candy's texture.

The step that matters

Adding the cream of tartar and baking soda. Both go in just before removing the pot from heat, because the baking soda reacts with the acid and foams quickly. Adding them too early lets the foam deflate and leaves the candy dense.

Swap the walnut

The recipe marks walnut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, sugar, butter, cream):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, sugar, butter, cream. 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

Peanut 4 See all 242 →

You might also like

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