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Dessert

Chocolate Nut Candy

A chocolate and pecan candy made by boiling chocolate, molasses, milk, brown sugar, butter, vanilla, and pecan nuts until hard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Nut Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Combine chocolate, molasses, milk, brown sugar, butter, vanilla, and pecan nuts in a granite or copper saucepan.

  2. Heat slowly, stirring until thoroughly dissolved.

  3. Boil until the mixture hardens; test by dropping a few drops into cold water. If it hardens quickly, it is cooked enough.

Set

  1. Pour into a greased pan and let it cool in a dry place to harden.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Vanilla + nutstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Chocolate
Provides the dark, bitter cocoa flavour and firms the candy as it cools.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness and moisture, and helps the candy set chewy-firm.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and caramel notes, and helps the mixture harden as it cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, softening the sugar mixture as it melts.
Pecan nuts
Add crunch and a toasted, buttery nut flavour throughout the candy.

The step that matters

Boiling to the hardening point. Sugar candy sets according to how far its water has boiled off. Too little cooking leaves it soft and sticky, while too much makes it brittle or grainy. The cold-water test shows when it is ready.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chocolate, molasses, milk, sugar, butter, egg, vanilla):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Cocoafits about as well
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chocolate, molasses, milk, sugar, butter, egg, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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