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Dessert

Molasses Taffy

Molasses taffy is a chewy candy made by cooking molasses with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Molasses Taffy

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the molasses

  1. In a frying pan, combine molasses and butter.

  2. Stir frequently to prevent burning.

  3. When the mixture thickens, drop a spoonful into cold water.

  4. If it becomes brittle, remove from heat and pour into a buttered pan.

Cool and pull

  1. Let it cool until it is safe to handle.

  2. To pull the taffy, use a nail in the wall at a convenient height.

  3. Throw the taffy over the nail and pull it back and forth until it lightens in color.

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 + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Molasses + buttertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,123 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,879 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Provides the main sweetness, deep flavor, and dark color, and its sugars set into the taffy as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the texture and makes the taffy less sticky and easier to pull.

The step that matters

Testing with cold water. Drop a spoonful into cold water to judge the sugar concentration. As the mixture cooks, more water evaporates and the sugar becomes firmer when chilled. Removing it too early leaves the taffy soft and sticky, while removing it too late makes it hard and brittle.

“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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