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Dessert

Swiss Milk Toffee

A sweet toffee made with butter, sugar, and condensed milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and condensed milk work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 804 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Swiss Milk Toffee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the toffee

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Stir in the condensed milk.

  4. Let it boil gently until it firms up when tested in cold water.

Set and cut

  1. Pour into a buttered tin and cut into squares before it cools.

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. Sugar + condensed milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + condensed milktop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together711 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

Butter
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture and carries flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens and, when boiled, sets into a firm toffee structure.
Condensed milk
Provides milk solids and sugar that brown and thicken into a chewy toffee.

The step that matters

Boiling until it firms in cold water. Toffee sets by reaching the right sugar concentration. Too little boiling leaves it soft and sticky, while too much makes it hard and brittle. The cold-water test shows when the mixture has reached the right stage.

“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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