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Dessert

Butter-scotch

A hard candy made from sugar, water, vinegar, cream of tartar, butter, lemon extract, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Butter-scotch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, water, vinegar, and cream of tartar.

  2. Boil without stirring until the mixture can snap and break.

  3. Just before removing from heat, add baking soda.

Pour and mark

  1. Pour the mixture into well-buttered biscuit tins, spreading it to a thickness of ¼ inch.

  2. When partly cold, mark off into inch 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 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

White sugar
Forms the brittle candy base and provides the sweetness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps keep the sugar from crystallising.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that helps keep the sugar smooth and prevents graininess.
Baking soda
Reacts with the hot sugar mixture to create bubbles that lighten the candy.

The step that matters

Boil without stirring. Stirring during boiling can trigger sugar crystals to form, making the candy grainy instead of smooth and brittle. Cooking to the hard-crack stage gives the snap the recipe describes.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, cream, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, cream, butter. 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.

More butter scotch recipes

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

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