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Chocolate Caramels

Chocolate caramels made with grated chocolate, coffee sugar, New Orleans molasses, milk, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and coffee are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,497 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells buttery, creamy. The science ↓

Chocolate Caramels

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. In a saucepan, combine grated chocolate, coffee sugar, New Orleans molasses, milk, and butter the size of an egg.

  2. Boil the mixture for about 30 minutes.

Pour and mark

  1. Pour the mixture into pans.

  2. Before it hardens, mark the surface into small squares.

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. Chocolate + coffeetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

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

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

  3. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 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

Grated chocolate
Adds chocolate flavor and cocoa fat to the caramel's richness.
Coffee sugar
Provides sweetness and helps the mixture set into a chewy texture as it cooks.
New orleans molasses
Adds moisture, sweetness, and a deep, slightly bitter flavor that complements the chocolate.
Milk
Adds moisture and milk solids that make the caramel creamy and softer.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the caramel smooth and tender rather than brittle.

The step that matters

Mark the squares before the caramel hardens. As the cooked sugar mixture cools, it quickly becomes firm, so cuts or marks made too late will crack or tear the surface instead of giving clean squares.

“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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