Butterscotch ... Butterscotch is a type of confection whose primary ingredients are brown sugar and butter. Some recipes include cream, vanilla, and salt.

Understanding the Context

The earliest known recipes, in mid-19th century Yorkshire, used treacle (molasses) in place of, or in addition to, sugar. You only need five basic ingredients to create this rich homemade butterscotch sauce. Making the sauce takes just minutes on the stove, with no candy-making experience needed. Butterscotch is a candy made by heating brown sugar and butter on the stove to the soft crack stage, between 270°F and 290°F.

Key Insights

First invented in the late 1800s, butterscotch can be a soft or hard candy or a sauce. To make homemade butterscotch, start by adding 1 cup of sugar to a pot and pouring in enough water to cover the sugar. Then, bring the mixture to a boil, stirring it constantly so it doesn't burn or stick to the bottom. Sometimes you’ll see recipes that use caramel and butterscotch interchangeably, but they’re not the same thing. Caramel at its most basic is just caramelized sugar, with nothing else added (aside from maybe some water), while butterscotch is always the combination of cooked butter and sugar.

Final Thoughts

These delicious butterscotch recipes include everything from classic oatmeal scotchies to poached pears. Butterscotch, usually hard candy made by boiling brown sugar and butter and sometimes corn syrup in water. The name’s origin is unclear; it may denote the candy’s origin in Scotland or an original ingredient of ‘scotched,’ or scorched, butter.