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Dessert

Butter Scotch

A sweet confection made from sugar, butter, milk, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Butter Scotch

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the toffee

  1. Combine the sugar and milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir occasionally over low heat until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Add the cream of tartar and the butter, a small piece at a time.

  4. Boil the mixture until a drop forms a moderately hard ball in cold water.

Set and wrap

  1. Pour the mixture onto a greased baking sheet.

  2. Once firm, mark into small squares.

  3. When cool, cut the sections.

  4. Wrap each piece in wax paper.

  5. Wrap each piece in tinfoil.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Dissolves and sets into the hard, brittle body of the candy as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer flavour and a softer, creamier bite.
Milk
Provides moisture and milk solids that give the candy its creamy, caramel-like colour and taste.
Cream of tartar
Acidity that helps prevent the sugar from crystallising into grainy texture.

The step that matters

Boil to a moderately hard ball stage. Sugar candy sets according to how much water has boiled off. Stopping too early leaves it soft and sticky, while cooking too far makes it hard and brittle. Testing a drop in cold water shows when the concentration is right.

“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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Pie 26Candy 12brittle 4Filling 3Squares 3 See all 152 →

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