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Dessert

Butter Scotch

A sweet treat made by boiling butter, sugar, and water until thick, then cooling and cutting into squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Butter Scotch

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the mixture

  1. Combine butter, sugar, and water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

Set and cut

  1. Pour the thickened mixture onto a buttered dish.

  2. Allow to cool and cut into 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 + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Butter + teatop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together703 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Sugar + teatop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,204 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

Butter
Adds richness, smooth mouthfeel, and a buttery flavor to the candy.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, as it thickens and cools, sets the candy firm.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it thickens. As water evaporates, the sugar concentration rises. Stop too early and the candy stays soft and sticky; cook too long and it becomes hard, brittle, or scorched.

“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 →

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