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Butter Scotch
Three tablespoons of molasses; two tablespoons of sugar; two tablespoons of water; one tablespoon of butter; add a pinch of soda. Boil until it hardens when tested in cold water.
A miniature batch — the whole thing amounts to about half a cup of syrup — but it behaves like any hard candy, and the cold-water test is doing real work.
- Cold water test means hard crackCold water test -- "Hardens when tested in cold water" points to one of the firm stages; for a brittle butterscotch that means hard crack, roughly 300-310F on a candy thermometer, where a drop in cold water forms threads that snap rather than bend. The recipe does not specify a stage, and anything softer will set tacky.
- The sodaA pinch of baking soda reacts with the acid in the molasses and aerates the syrup slightly, giving butterscotch its characteristic brittle-but-friable snap rather than a glassy shatter. Use no more than about 1/8 teaspoon at this scale or the candy tastes soapy.
- MolassesUse unsulphured light or dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and was not what the period meant. Sorghum syrup works as a substitute and was available in some American households of the period.
- Pan sizeThree tablespoons of molasses in a large saucepan will scorch before it registers on a thermometer. Use the smallest heavy pan you own, and tip it to pool the syrup deep enough to read.
- Add the butter lateStirring the butter in near the end, once the syrup is well past the boil, keeps it from separating and browning on its own. Butterscotch takes its name and flavour from that butter, so scorching it is the one failure worth avoiding.
- Pouring outPour onto a buttered marble slab or a buttered sheet pan. When it has set enough to hold a line but is still warm, score it into squares with an oiled knife; once cold it breaks along the scores.
- YieldAbout 85 g of finished candy -- a small saucer's worth. Doubling or tripling is straightforward, and makes the thermometer far easier to use.
- WeatherHard candy pulls moisture from the air and goes sticky on a humid day. Make it in dry weather and store it airtight, layered with waxed paper.
Butterscotch is generally traced to Yorkshire in the early nineteenth century, with Doncaster claiming it as a local speciality; the second half of the name is usually explained as "scotch" in the sense of to score or cut, which is how the sheet is divided before it cools, though the derivation is traditional rather than documented. By the time the Butterick Publishing Company issued its cook book, butterscotch had crossed the Atlantic and settled into the American home-candy repertoire alongside molasses taffy and peanut brittle — all of them built on the same principle of boiling a sugar syrup to a known stage and testing it by eye and by hand, since household thermometers were still uncommon. The tiny quantities here suggest a recipe meant for children or for using up the last inch of a molasses jug, an economy typical of the candy chapters in books of this period.