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Chocolate Caramels

Chocolate caramels are made by boiling sugar with milk or cream, butter, and chocolate until brittle, then poured and scored.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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. Combine sugar, milk or cream, butter, and chocolate in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture without stirring until it reaches a brittle stage when dropped into cold water.

Set and cut

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered shallow pan.

  2. Once it begins to harden, score it into squares for easy breaking.

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. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

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

  4. Butter + chocolatetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,543 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  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

White sugar
Provides the sweetness and the caramel base that sets firm as it cools.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the texture of the caramel.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, tender bite and rich flavour.
Unsweetened chocolate
Adds chocolate flavour and deep colour to the caramel.

The step that matters

Boiling without stirring. Sugar syrup stirred while boiling can crystallise and turn grainy. Boiling it undisturbed until it reaches the brittle stage gives the firm, smooth texture caramels need.

“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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