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Dessert

Coffee Cream Caramels

A sweet candy made from sugar, water, cream, butter, and coffee extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter 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 ↓

Coffee Cream Caramels

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Melt the sugar with as little water as possible.

  2. When the sugar begins to bubble, slowly pour in the cream while stirring carefully.

  3. Add the butter and coffee extract, stirring gently and continuously.

  4. Cook until the mixture is brittle when dropped in cold water.

Set and cut

  1. Pour into a buttered tin dish.

  2. When nearly cooled, mark off into squares with a buttered 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. Cream + buttertop 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. Cream + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Sugar + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  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

Sugar
Forms the caramel base and provides sweetness and the brittle set when cooked.
Rich cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the caramel a softer, creamier texture.
Butter
Adds fat for smoothness and a rounder, softer bite in the finished candy.
Coffee extract
Supplies the coffee flavour that defines the candy.

The step that matters

Cook until brittle in cold water. Sugar syrup changes stage as its water evaporates and its temperature rises. Stopping too early leaves caramels soft and sticky, while cooking too long makes them hard and grainy. The cold-water test shows the set point.

“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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