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Molasses Candy

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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. In a saucepan, combine molasses and sugar.

  2. Boil the mixture, stirring every minute.

  3. When it is partly cooked, add the walnut-sized butter.

  4. Add cream of tartar with the butter, and just before pouring out, mix in the baking soda.

  5. Test for doneness by dropping a small amount into cold water; it should break like glass.

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 sweetness that define the candy.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture harden into a brittle candy as it cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the hot syrup to release gas, making the candy light and airy.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that helps keep the sugar smooth and prevents crystallization.

The step that matters

Testing for doneness. Cooking sugar syrup past the right point changes its texture completely. A small drop in cold water shows whether it has reached the brittle stage, where it snaps like glass, before the mixture is poured out.

Swap the walnut

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.

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