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Chocolate Caramels

Chocolate caramels are made by cooking chocolate, molasses, milk, and sugar until hard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chocolate Caramels

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. In a saucepan, combine chocolate, molasses, milk, and sugar.

  2. Stir until perfectly dissolved, but stop stirring once it begins to boil to prevent graininess.

  3. Cook until the mixture hardens and becomes brittle when dropped in cold water, but do not overcook.

Set and cut

  1. Grease a plate with butter and pour the mixture to a thickness of about ½ inch.

  2. When nearly cool, cut into small squares with a greased knife.

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

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

  2. Chocolate + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  3. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Chocolate + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chocolate
Adds deep flavor and color, and contributes fat that firms the caramel as it sets.
Molasses
Provides sweetness, moisture, and a rich, slightly bitter flavor that deepens the caramel.
Milk
Adds dairy fat and water that soften the texture and help the candy become smooth.
Sugar
Sets the structure as it cooks and hardens, giving the candy its chewy-to-brittle texture.

The step that matters

Stopping the stirring at the boil. Stirring once the mixture boils lets sugar crystals form and spread, which makes caramel grainy. Cooking it too far makes it hard and brittle instead of chewy, so the stage must be checked with cold water.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chocolate, molasses, milk, sugar, 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.

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