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Recipe for Making Butter Scotch

A confection made from sugar, milk, water, cream of tartar, and butter, cooked until firm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Recipe for Making Butter Scotch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the butterscotch

  1. Mix sugar, milk, and water in a pot.

  2. Place the pot on the fire and add cream of tartar.

  3. When it begins to boil, add the butter.

  4. Reduce the heat and stir continuously.

  5. When the mixture thickens, test a small amount in cold water.

  6. If it forms a hard ball that breaks off, it is done.

Set and cut

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pan.

  2. Once set and cool, cut or mark it into squares before it hardens.

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

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 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. Milk + creamtop 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
Provides the sweetness and, as it cooks, the caramel flavour and firm texture of the candy.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the candy a smooth, buttery texture and flavour.
Milk
Adds liquid and milk solids that deepen the flavour and soften the final texture.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the syrup, helping prevent sugar crystallisation for a smoother candy.

The step that matters

Testing the cold-water hard ball. Sugar syrup's final texture depends on how far it has cooked. Cooking too little leaves it soft and sticky; cooking too far makes it brittle. The cold-water test shows when it has reached the hard-ball 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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Pie 26Candy 12brittle 4Filling 3Squares 3 See all 152 →

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