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Chocolate Caramels

Chocolate Caramels are made by cooking molasses, sugar, and chocolate with butter, then cooling and cutting into squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,020 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Chocolate Caramels

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Combine molasses, sugar, and chocolate in a saucepan.

  2. Add butter and bring to a boil, cooking until it hardens.

  3. Remove from heat, stir in vanilla, and let cool.

Set and cut

  1. Pour into buttered tins.

  2. When nearly cool, cut into squares and roll in wax paper.

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. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vanilla + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Vanilla and sugar 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

Molasses
Adds dark color, deep flavor, moisture, and a chewy texture to the caramels.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, as it cooks, helps set the firm body of the caramel.
Chocolate
Adds rich chocolate flavor and darkens the color of the caramel.
Butter
Adds fat, which softens the texture and gives a smooth, tender bite.

The step that matters

Cooking until it hardens. Firmness depends on how much water has boiled off the sugar mixture. Stopping too early leaves the caramels soft and sticky, while cooking too long makes them brittle.

“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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