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Dessert

Old-fashioned Butter Scotch

A caramel candy made by boiling sugar, butter, lemon oil, and tartar, then pouring onto a sheet and cutting into pieces.

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

Old-fashioned Butter Scotch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine the sugar and water in a three-pint porcelain-lined saucepan.

  2. Set over medium heat and stir until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Wash down the sides of the pan with a damp brush.

  4. Cover the pan with a wooden lid.

  5. Let it boil for a few minutes.

  6. Remove the lid.

  7. Watch for bubbles to grow larger.

  8. When the syrup turns from water white to dark straw color, remove from heat.

Finish and set

  1. Stir in the softened butter and oil of lemon.

  2. Return to heat for a few seconds.

  3. Pour the mixture thinly over oiled sheets of tin.

  4. Before it hardens, mark it into squares or diamonds with a knife.

  5. Once hardened, break into uniform 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. Butter + creamtop 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. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Granulated sugar
Forms the brittle candy base and, when cooked to caramel, gives the sweet, toasted flavor.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the candy's texture and adding buttery flavor.
Cream of tartar
Acidity that helps prevent sugar from crystallizing, keeping the candy smooth.

The step that matters

Removing the syrup at dark straw color. Sugar darkens quickly near the end of cooking. Removing it too late gives a burnt, bitter flavor, while removing it too early leaves the candy soft instead of brittle.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cream. 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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Pie 26Candy 12brittle 4Filling 3Squares 3 See all 152 →

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