Skip to main content
Dessert

Butter Scotch

A candy made from coffee sugar, butter, cream of tartar, lemon extract, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Dissolve the sugar in enough water.

  2. Boil without stirring until it breaks easily in cold water.

  3. Remove from heat and add the lemon extract.

Shape and cut

  1. Pour into a well-buttered pan to a thickness of ¼ inch.

  2. When partly cold, cut into small squares.

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 sugar
Dissolves and cooks into a hard, brittle candy that sets firm as it cools.
Butter
Greases the pan so the candy releases cleanly, and adds richness to the flavor.
Cream of tartar
Its acidity helps keep the sugar from crystallizing into a grainy texture.
Lemon extract
Adds a bright citrus aroma and flavor to the candy.

The step that matters

Boil without stirring until it breaks easily in cold water. Stirring hot sugar syrup can trigger crystallization, leaving a grainy candy. Stopping at the right point matters too: undercooked syrup stays sticky, while overcooked syrup becomes hard and bitter.

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 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCoffee Ice CreamCoffee Ice Cream91 recipes