Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Toffee, Russian
Ingredients
Directions
Make the toffee
Dissolve the sugar in the cream.
Place the saucepan in a bain-marie or a pot of boiling water.
Stir and cook until the mixture thickens and pulls away from the sides of the pan.
Remove from heat and stir in the flavoring essence.
Set and cut
Pour onto oiled or buttered tins.
Once cool, cut into squares.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Loaf sugar
- Provides the sweet base that cooks down into a firm, chewy toffee.
- Cream
- Adds fat and milk solids, giving the toffee a softer, richer texture.
The step that matters
Stir and cook until the mixture thickens and pulls away from the sides of the pan. Cooking in a gentle bain-marie keeps the sugar and cream from scorching while water slowly evaporates and the mixture thickens. Pulling away from the sides signals enough moisture has left for the toffee to set firm once cooled.
“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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