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Butter-scotch

A candy made by boiling sugar, butter, and cream of tartar, then cooling and cutting into squares.

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 ↓

Butter-scotch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Combine the sugar, butter, cream of tartar, and enough cold water to dissolve the sugar in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture without stirring until it breaks easily when dropped in cold water.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the lemon extract.

Pour and shape

  1. Butter a dripping pan and pour the mixture into it to a thickness of ¼ inch.

  2. When the mixture is partly cold, mark it into squares.

  3. If desired, pull the mixture when partly cold until it is very white for a texture similar to ice cream 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. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Coffee a sugar
Provides the sweet base and, when boiled, sets into a brittle candy structure.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender bite and rich flavor in the finished candy.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the syrup, helping prevent sugar crystallization for a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Boil without stirring. Stirring a boiling sugar syrup can trigger crystal formation, leading to a grainy candy. Boiling until it breaks easily in cold water shows the syrup has reached the hard-crack stage needed for a brittle set.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, 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 butter scotch recipes

Pie 26Candy 12brittle 4Filling 3Squares 3 See all 152 →

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