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Chocolate Caramels

Chocolate caramels made with chocolate, cream or milk, sugars, molasses, butter, and optional nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Baker's chocolate, cream or milk, white sugar, brown sugar, and molasses.

  2. If using milk, add the butter.

  3. Stir the mixture constantly while cooking.

  4. Cook until the mixture snaps and cracks in cold water.

  5. Add chopped nuts before removing from heat if desired.

Set and cut

  1. Remove from heat and pour into buttered pans.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Chocolate + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Baker's chocolate
Adds chocolate flavour and deep colour to the caramel.
Cream or milk
Supplies dairy fat and moisture that make the caramel soft and creamy.
White sugar
Provides sweetness and helps the mixture harden into a firm candy as it cooks.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a richer, toffee-like flavour through its molasses content.
Molasses
Contributes moisture, dark colour and a robust caramel flavour.

The step that matters

Stir constantly while cooking. Sugar and dairy can scorch on the bottom of the pan before the rest of the mixture reaches temperature. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and prevents burnt flavour.

Swap the nuts

The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chocolate, cream, sugar, molasses, butter, milk):

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

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