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Dessert

Hard Caramels

Hard Caramels are a brittle candy made from sugar, molasses, chocolate, butter, and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and nuts work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 440 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Hard Caramels

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

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

  2. Boil the mixture until it becomes brittle when tested.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in chopped nuts.

Set and break

  1. Pour the mixture onto buttered pans and let it cool.

  2. Once cooled, break into pieces.

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. Chocolate + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Chocolate + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,543 recipes

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

  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
Provides sweetness and, when boiled, forms the hard, brittle candy structure.
Molasses
Adds depth of flavour and moisture, and helps the caramel set darker and chewier.
Chocolate
Adds richness and flavour to the candy as it melts into the boiling mixture.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother texture and helps keep the candy from sticking.
Chopped nuts
Add crunch and texture throughout the set candy.

The step that matters

Boil until brittle when tested. Sugar syrup must reach the hard-crack stage to set firm when cooled. Stopping early leaves a soft, sticky candy, while overcooking can scorch the sugars and taste bitter.

Swap the nuts

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, molasses, chocolate, 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.

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