Butter Scotch
1 cup sugar 1 cup molasses 1/2 cup butter 2 tablespoons vinegar 1 teaspoon soda Boil all the ingredients together until the syrup will snap when tested in cold water. Pour into buttered tins and when nearly cold cut into small squares and wrap each in paraffin paper.
A straightforward hard-crack candy, but the original leaves out the two numbers a modern cook wants: the temperature and when to add the soda.
- The hinge: add the soda at the endSoda timing -- the original boils everything together, soda included, which many period molasses candies do. If you prefer, boil the sugar, molasses, butter and vinegar first, then take the pan off the heat and beat in the soda just before pouring: added to a full boil it foams hard and much of the gas is lost before the candy sets. Beaten in at the end it aerates the candy slightly and softens the snap.
- "Snap when tested in cold water"That is the hard-crack stage, 300-310F on a candy thermometer. A drizzle into ice water should set into threads that break cleanly rather than bending.
- Soda means baking sodaIn books of this period "soda" means sodium bicarbonate, and by then "saleratus" was generally being used for the same thing (the word originally referred to potassium bicarbonate). Not washing soda, and not baking powder.
- MolassesUse unsulphured light or dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter at this concentration. The vinegar is there as an acid to invert some of the sugar and keep the batch from crystallizing.
- Pan and depth"Buttered tins" means shallow rimmed pans. Pour to about a quarter inch; thicker and the squares are hard to bite, thinner and they shatter.
- Scoring, not cuttingThe recipe says to cut when nearly cold. Score the surface into squares with a buttered knife while the sheet is still pliable but no longer fluid; leave it until fully cold and it will break along random lines instead.
- Paraffin paperThat is waxed paper. Wrap only when completely cool, and store airtight; molasses candy picks up humidity and turns sticky within a day in a damp kitchen.
- YieldUpwards of a pound of candy; more than a single 8x8 pan will hold at the depth suggested, so use two shallow pans or accept a thicker slab. Cut small, it makes several dozen squares.
Butterscotch is generally traced to Yorkshire in the early nineteenth century, where Doncaster confectioners made a name for it, and the "scotch" in the name is sometimes said to come from "to score," though the derivation is uncertain. Older recipes like this one lean on molasses rather than the brown sugar and cream of later butterscotch sauces and candies, which gives a darker, more assertive flavor closer to old-fashioned toffee.