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Dessert

Toffee, Russian

A sweet confection made by cooking sugar with cream and flavoring until thick, then poured into tins and cut into squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Toffee, Russian

Ingredients

Directions

Make the toffee

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the cream.

  2. Place the saucepan in a bain-marie or a pot of boiling water.

  3. Stir and cook until the mixture thickens and pulls away from the sides of the pan.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the flavouring essence.

Set and cut

  1. Pour the mixture onto oiled or greased tins.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Loaf sugar
Provides sweetness and, as it cooks down with the cream, the bulk of the toffee.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, which give the toffee its smooth, rich texture as it thickens.

The step that matters

Stir and cook until the mixture thickens and pulls away from the sides of the pan. Cooking gently in a bain-marie keeps the cream from scorching. Stopping at the right thickness matters, because the toffee sets firmer as it cools, so undercooking leaves it soft and overcooking makes it hard.

“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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