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Dessert

Butter Scotch

A sweet confection made from butter, sugar, and water, boiled until thickened and cut 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

Make the scotch

  1. In a saucepan, combine butter, sugar, and water.

  2. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

Set and cut

  1. Pour the thickened mixture onto a buttered dish.

  2. Allow it to cool, then 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).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the candy a smooth, tender bite.
Sugar
Forms the sweet base that hardens into a brittle, glassy candy as it cools.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can boil evenly before thickening.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it thickens. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration to set firm when cooled. Stopping too early leaves it soft and sticky, while overcooking makes it hard and bitter.

“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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