What the hell is butterscotch? What about molasses? And caramel!? Why can't Matthew ever remember? Today we introduce a new, extremely rare segment and go down some deep rabbit holes while we discuss that famous emollient: butterscotch. We look for ha'pennies and learn that some mysteries will remain mysterious.
Easy Homemade Butterscotch Sauce
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:00
Hi I'm Matthew.
Molly 0:05
I'm Molly and
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:06
this is spilled milk the show where we cook something delicious. Eat it all. And you can have any
Molly 0:10
Today's episode was suggested by me.
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:13
Do you remember when or why?
Molly 0:14
I think it was last week. Okay, maybe I should say what the episode is butterscotch butterscotch and I suggested it because June had made this recipe that we got from our neighbor last year at like a neighborhood like night out or you know, neighborhood block party kind of thing for like, basically a butterscotch blondie. Okay. Yeah, the recipe calls it a butterscotch brownie, but it's a butterscotch blondie. Joon had made it just last week, and I was reminded of how simple it is. And how incredibly delicious.
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:51
Let's start there because I have questions about it that I don't want. Yeah, get late. Yeah. Is it made with butterscotch chips? Or is it made with like brown sugar and butter? No,
Molly 0:58
it's made with brown sugar and butter. Okay. Yeah. Brown sugar, butter. Both
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:02
of those things. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah. Okay, so my memory lane. You know, I've had butterscotch sauce on ice cream a million times. I've certainly had like butterscotch cookies, like butterscotch pennies, which we'll talk about and others. But I have butterscotch amnesia, by which I mean, people keep explaining to me what the difference between caramel and butterscotch is and I keep forgetting we're going to clear that. Yes, in fact, we are debuting a new segments starting right now. Unless you weren't done with memory lane.
Molly 1:33
I'm not quite done.
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:34
That's what we call a teaser.
Molly 1:37
Don't Don't go away.
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:38
Don't switch to a different station. Do you say stay tuned.
Molly 1:42
I think I said stay tuned. Okay. I don't know. When I was a kid. I think butterscotch was one of my favorite flavors, which is kind of weird because I don't think of it as a typical like, it's certainly not as common as chocolate or caramel.
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:56
I think that butters both butterscotch and caramel flavor Jolly Ranchers. Is this possible?
Molly 2:02
I'm not sure. Anyway, as a kid I remember vividly those hard candies that were like bright yellow with yellow with a yellow crinkly wrapper. Okay,
Matthew Amster-Burton 2:14
I like wearing about this yellow. Yes. So I of course remember these candies as well. As the rapper always been like this. No, the rapper used to have twisty. Okay, thank God. I thought losing my mind. No, this
Molly 2:27
wrapper is like, you know, heat sealed at each end. Yeah, no, they used to have twisty ends.
Matthew Amster-Burton 2:33
Like a starlight mitt. That's right. Maybe they repackage the starlight mints also,
Molly 2:38
Oh, no.
Matthew Amster-Burton 2:39
That's gonna be a problem.
Molly 2:41
Anyway, what episode was that? Did I dental emergent? No, I
Matthew Amster-Burton 2:46
don't think that was its own episode.
Molly 2:47
Nobody was in it was one of the first bits we did that. That really hit for me.
Matthew Amster-Burton 2:54
Yes, that. That's right. Yeah. And then it was like a thing I made of like that. I think I think I was so convincing in my improv that
Molly 3:03
I think it was the grilled cheese episode with cheese. No, not grilled cheese, ham and cheese, ham and cheese. The makeout started talking about making out and you said we got into some sort of a joke about like, turn on. Right. And you said that Lori's biggest turn on? Was the sound of a star light meant being unwrapped?
Matthew Amster-Burton 3:24
Which to be clear the rap not true. It is like a thing that I made up like on the spot just dead to bed just
Molly 3:31
for a minute. Like I bid it because I mean, I believed it. Yeah, because it was so specific. Now I mean, I can never look at Starlight mints. Thinking of Laurie just being so aroused by them. Yeah, yeah. Anyway,
Matthew Amster-Burton 3:52
so anyway, I assume butterscotch discs work the same way as a
Molly 3:56
kid. I was always very pleased to see these in like, you know, some jar of mixed hard candies because I thought these were the tastiest ones in preparation
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:05
for this episode. I was like So Laurie and I were talking about like, what are the hard candies you find like in assortment in a bowl like in a waiting room. And so there's these there's those strawberry things. You know, the ones that look like a little striped like little strawberry and are kind of chewy. Those are good. There's Starlight mints, and then there might be some like, like round just like fruit hard candies.
Molly 4:28
There might be Werther's Originals. If
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:29
you're lucky. It might be a little Tootsie Roll in there where
Molly 4:32
there's originals up a butterscotch. No, they
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:35
are a caramel candy. I looked into this. Okay, yeah, I'm gonna stuck on this for a little bit. And
Molly 4:40
I just want to I want to be clear and say that now I don't think this is a very good candy.
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:45
I still think it's pretty good.
Molly 4:46
It tastes very fake butterscotch to me.
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:49
We'll talk about that. You just spit it out. I just spit it out because I didn't want to click a candy for the rest of the episode. I do like it. Okay, it's time for that new segment that we teased. Are you ready?
Molly 5:02
I don't have a disposable napkin. Oh, thank you.
Matthew Amster-Burton 5:04
Okay, you're gonna need a disposable napkin for this new segment. Because it's called What the hell is butterscotch?
Molly 5:12
Oh, okay. Does it have a song? It sure
Matthew Amster-Burton 5:15
does. It go What? What? What? What?
What the hell is butterscotch? Well all right. This is episode 650
Molly 5:28
That seems like time for a new set. It's
Matthew Amster-Burton 5:31
time for a new segment. We're This is my promise to you the listeners that unless we forget this bit, we're gonna do this segment every 100 episodes, because that's how long it will take me to forget what butterscotch
Molly 5:43
oh wait, we're always going to do
Matthew Amster-Burton 5:46
what is butter? Always every time should be what the hell is butterscotch we're gonna play the same song. Okay, and we're gonna do it on episode 758 50. Like, you know, God willing if we make it that that far, we'll do it on episode 27 What
Molly 6:02
did they say we would do when we got to like episode 1000 Like that we would die or something
Matthew Amster-Burton 6:08
like that. I think that was what you're gonna eat me.
Molly 6:11
Okay, so is it all? No, I was about to ask you. Have you seen that movie but
Matthew Amster-Burton 6:17
not seen the movie bones at all? That's that's a your kind of movie. Yeah. Okay. Is it
Molly 6:22
actually it's a cannibal movie. Yeah, with Timothy shallow May.
Matthew Amster-Burton 6:26
Okay. Yeah, I mean, good for good for Tim. Yep. All right.
Molly 6:33
Okay. All right. What it What the hell is butterscotch? I'm so
Matthew Amster-Burton 6:36
glad you asked. So butterscotch is a confection made with brown sugar and butter in which the sugar is taken to the soft crack stage. Okay, and it is commonly flavored with vanilla. Okay, so you may then wonder, okay, well caramel sauce or caramel candies also often made with butter. So what's the difference? Right? Well, caramel starts with white sugar, like highly refined sugar that is melted and caramelized, which means the sugar gets very, very hot up to like 340 degrees Fahrenheit. Okay, and we did a caramel episode, by the way, Episode 147. And we also did caramel corn on episode 138. Okay,
Molly 7:14
so Wait, does brown sugar not get as I'll just wait, I'll just wait. No, no, you
Matthew Amster-Burton 7:19
can you can jump in with brown sugar not get as hot. You could like take brown sugar up to a high temperature but when you make butterscotch you don't Okay. So butterscotch doubt starts with brown sugar, which is the Angelo's debut album, okay, it is also sugar with added molasses. Got it? And at this point I realized okay, first of all, I was like, did we do an episode about molasses? Well, we did molasses cookies, Episode 303. Okay, I realized I did not know what molasses was. I know it's simply syrupy stuff that you that you buy in a bottle with a rabbit on it. Yeah. And I was like, Okay, first of all, I didn't know what butterscotch was then I didn't know what brown sugar was that I didn't know what molasses was. How deep was this rabbit hole gonna go? Oh, man. Okay, so molasses. Do you know what molasses is? No. Okay, great. Molasses is the byproduct of extracting sugar from cane juice. So you juice the sugar cane, you boil down the juice and you keep like like scraping off the sugar crystals that form right, and the stuff you're boiling keeps getting thicker and darker. And that's molasses. So like, the more the further along in the process you get the less sugar there is in the molasses and the darker it gets to the point where the last molasses is blackstrap molasses which is really dark and has very little sugar in it. Interesting because okay, like harvested all the sugar off. So it's like all the other stuff. Okay,
Molly 8:43
so what about so there's, you know, then there's like regular molasses and then there's also like mild molasses
Matthew Amster-Burton 8:50
Yeah, it's just like how far along in the process is that you stop and like bottle, the molasses. Okay, so that's molasses. It's got lots of flavor compounds that are not present in refined sugar. And so that is part of the flavor of butterscotch because it's present in brown sugar. So So brown sugar, it has a different flavor profile from white sugar and therefore a different flavor profile from caramel. And butterscotch, whether it's in a sauce or a candy has a different texture than caramel because the sugar is only heated to like 270 or 290 for butterscotch candy or even less like 240 Maybe for butterscotch sauce. Okay, and so you got textural differences and you've got flavor differences but basically a combination of brown sugar and butter. Okay. Okay,
Molly 9:38
so where does this like word come from? Is it is it like a Scottish
Matthew Amster-Burton 9:43
confection? It is not from the from Scotland or Scottish. Mr. Etymology this was this was a pretty straightforward Mr. Etymology, although like, as always there there are like a couple of possible explanations and we don't know for sure, but there there seems to be pretty much it can census on this one so, Wikipedia quote food historians have several theories regarding the name and origin origin of this confectionary, but none is conclusive. One explanation is the meaning to cut or score for the word scotch, as the confection must be cut into pieces or scotch before hardening. The Scotch part of its name possibly was derived from the word scorch. But it sounds like Scotch as in score seems to be much more widely accepted at this point that it refers to a Katie made with butter that you then score and cut into squares. Ah,
Molly 10:33
okay, interesting. So, yeah, it could be Karis scotch.
Matthew Amster-Burton 10:38
It could be Cara scotch. Yeah, but But in practice, like the but butterscotch had more of a ring to it, I guess. I don't know. I wasn't there.
Molly 10:46
Okay. And so where did this stuff come from? Like, where was it? Where was it made? Well,
Matthew Amster-Burton 10:51
as I mentioned, I wasn't there but I have some information. So the city of Doncaster in Yorkshire is credited with the invention of butterscotch ever been up to up to the north of England? I have not I haven't either, but I'd like to, according to Wikipedia, quote by 1851, Doncaster butterscotch was sold commercially by rival confectioner's s. Parkinson and sons. Parkinson started to use and advertise the Doncaster church as their trademark it was advertised as quote royal Doncaster butterscotch or quote the Queen's sweet, neat and said to be quote, the best amoliant for the chest in the winter season.
Molly 11:28
Oh, so do you smear it on?
Matthew Amster-Burton 11:29
i Yeah, so I think I assume someone was having fun on Wikipedia, but I wanted to read that just in case in case I think we should try it. I think we should like rub butterscotch on our chests and see what happens. Okay, at least when winter rolls around. Oh, good. Time we got some time to steal ourselves okay. Quote, bark bark insists. bargains. Butterscotch for dogs. bargains butterscotch was by appointment to the royal household and was presented to the President the Princess Elizabeth then the Duchess, Duchess of Edinburgh.
Molly 12:05
I don't understand what you're saying. Okay, this is Parkinson's butterscotch was by appointment to the Royal House means
Matthew Amster-Burton 12:13
that means they were like the official butterscotch supplier to the royal family. Okay, so like they got to use like a seal like a shield on their on their packaging saying like we supply the royal family with all their butterscotch needs. They just rub it all over themselves. It's nasty. Was yeah was presented the Princess Elizabeth and the Duchess of Edinburgh in 1948. And two and Princess Royal in 2007. And so my question for you is have you watched the crown? Oh, yeah. Okay, I haven't is this are these pivotal scenes in the crowd? The butterscotch presentation? Yeah.
Molly 12:46
Because they because they used it as an emollient on their chests in the winter. Yeah, I
Matthew Amster-Burton 12:52
assume it's like the it's like a heavily amoliant based show. Yeah, right.
Molly 12:56
Oh, yeah. There's like so much lubrication. Yeah, and moisturizing, quote, champion
Matthew Amster-Burton 13:02
and Reeves make luxury traditional butterscotch in Shropshire with British butter and British double cream wrapped in individual foil wrappers. Would anyone like to send us some of that? I think they we can order it online. If we if we can. I'm gonna I'm gonna like try and call in some favors. Okay, okay, that sounds good. Yeah, that
Molly 13:20
sounds fantastic.
So you mentioned these things called butterscotch pennies. I've never heard of these
Matthew Amster-Burton 13:34
butterscotch pennies are like a like a refrigerator cookie. Like like a slice and bake cookie. You would think that that I would like put some information on the agenda about what they are. It's a thing that Laurie has made like as a holiday cookie. Oh, okay. Like it's you could put them in a tin for sure. I'm sure it's like it's like a you know, slice slice and bake sugar cookie made with brown sugar and butter.
Molly 13:56
Is this what the song? Penny Lane? No, Christmas is coming. The goose is getting fat. Pleased to put a penny in the old man's hat. He wants to he wants a cookie. He wants you to put a cookie on it. And if you don't have a cookie, you can just give him half a cookie. Hey, Penny, yes, I
Matthew Amster-Burton 14:10
hate that. He's half a cookie of Kapha butterscotch cookie. Okay, you put on a recipe like and it's it's a real old timey like marked hand marked up recipe for butterscotch brownies Allah Molly's neighbor.
Molly 14:21
Yeah, you want to tell us about my neighbor. So I've got like some neighbors who I feel like I know. Well, this neighbor. I really only learned her name for the first time at like last year's neighborhood block party.
Matthew Amster-Burton 14:35
Okay, do you want to do you want to give her a shout out?
Molly 14:37
I'll give her a little shout out. Her name is Debbie. Okay. She's my neighbor, Debbie. And anyway, she lives at the end of my street. Basically, this is a really, really simple recipe you make in a nine by nine inch pan like a brownie pan, and it's just a half cup of butter. So a stick of butter that you put in a sauce pan and melt with a cup of brown sugar until it's done. solved and we use dark brown sugar.
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:02
Yeah, I was gonna mention that that the well I mentioned when we get to the sauce, okay,
Molly 15:06
and then you let the melted butter and brown sugar cool and you stir in an egg, and a teaspoon of vanilla and a half cup of flour plus some baking powder and some salt. The the original recipe as you also add some walnuts and coconut which I've never tried. We just make them as they are and sounds great. You put it in a you know, a nine inch square pan, you bake it for like 20 minutes at 350. And it's pretty thin. They come out pretty thin. But they're chewy, and they're perfectly butterscotch colored and they smell incredible. They're so good.
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:42
Yeah, no, that's what that's like what I most want in this kind of cookies for the chew to come through that shoe. Yeah, tell me about where the source of this recipe from Debbie because it's like is it from like a community cookbook or like a small
Molly 15:54
community cookbook? She just sent me like a photograph of the page. Okay, so yeah,
Matthew Amster-Burton 16:00
it's got it's got a real classic look to it does, doesn't
Molly 16:02
it? Yeah, I should. I shouldn't have cropped the photo so much. Because what you would have seen is that the next recipe is for mystery pudding.
Matthew Amster-Burton 16:10
Oh, god. Are you are you allowed to reveal what the mystery? No, I don't remember. Okay.
Molly 16:18
Okay, anyway, we can you know, we can find a way to to put this recipe on the show notes or something. Yeah, I know, do we could take Debbie's name off. I mean, or just maybe it
Matthew Amster-Burton 16:31
was wiped out Debbie's name replace it with your day.
Molly 16:35
Debbie pets totally kosher in recipe attribution.
Matthew Amster-Burton 16:38
Yeah. Yeah. I don't see any reason why this recipe wouldn't be kosher. All right, Matthew,
Molly 16:42
let's talk about those butterscotch candies. Okay, so
Matthew Amster-Burton 16:45
butterscotch dis candies? Like if you I don't remember how much of this we were talking about off air. But if you if you are if you're talking about it, you're talking about on an air okay. Yeah. All right, then they're the little butterscotch you know. orangey yellow butterscotch round hard. Really? Not
Molly 17:05
very good.
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:06
I think they're pretty good. Like, I don't want to eat a bunch of them. But like one of them. I'm pretty happy with it. Okay, like I you know, they've got like the the artificial butter flavor, which I kind of don't have a problem with and this
Molly 17:20
takes us to butterscotch chips, which for similar reasons. To the butterscotch discs. I've got a real problem with butterscotch chips.
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:30
I don't really care for them either. Like I would rather I would rather have like I like those little toffee bits. Those are really good. Or just like, you know, give me chocolate chips. But if you ever had oatmeal Scotch cheese No. Is it an oatmeal? Oatmeal Cookie with butterscotch chips? Pretty tasty.
Molly 17:49
Is there any company that makes a good quality? Butterscotch I'm so glad you asked.
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:54
That gets hard. Really makes a like butterscotch shape with real ingredients. Yes. Okay.
Molly 17:59
Okay, so I cannot stand the flavor of like the Toll House ones right? Yeah, no, I
Matthew Amster-Burton 18:05
agree.
Molly 18:07
We didn't really discuss the what we have had today. Did we? Yeah, let's
Matthew Amster-Burton 18:12
wait. There's one other cookie that I want to mention. Oh, and those champions. Have you ever had butterscotch butterscotch butters Dan,
Molly 18:18
your bread butter.
Matthew Amster-Burton 18:21
Your bread butter scotch haystacks? No, this is I haven't either one aren't
Molly 18:27
there there are other kinds of haystack chocolate butter haystacks
Matthew Amster-Burton 18:31
okay, right because like haystack is like a two ingredient cookie that is made with you know shelf stable chow mein noodles, you know that. So like the I've had the chocolate haystacks, our common Christmas cookie, I think, and those are pretty good if you make them with a decent chocolate chip. Lori says that the butterscotch haystacks are like one of the few things that she's had that like is actually chicken tenders like too sweet to eat. Wow. Okay, so I would still try it for sure.
Molly 19:01
All right. So what we wound up tasting today, butterscotch wise, other than the the butterscotch discs is you made a homemade butterscotch sauce for ice cream and we also tasted two commercial sauces Smuckers butterscotch sundae syrup and Ghiradelli caramel
Matthew Amster-Burton 19:21
Yeah, I wanted to do like caramel and butterscotch side by side. And
Molly 19:25
I found this Smuckers thing to be really unpleasant.
Matthew Amster-Burton 19:29
I so I liked it fine with vanilla ice cream tasting it on its own. I don't care for it.
Molly 19:35
Yeah, it's is it the is it the fake butter flavor that I am not liking or what is it?
Matthew Amster-Burton 19:41
I think it is the fake butter flavor and also it has a very thin texture, which seems seems odd because like making things viscous is one of the food industries like things that they're best at, but I feel I felt like this was a little too thin.
Molly 19:53
Yeah, it was it had a certain run
Matthew Amster-Burton 19:57
in a certain run like you could you can really like if you squeeze this bottle you can cause some damage you could. That Ghiradelli caramel sauce was fine. I want to I want to taste it kind of on its own. I was hoping for a real like obvious like caramel versus butterscotch showdown at the hoedown. Yeah, yeah, it's different.
Molly 20:15
Okay. Now I'm going to taste again the butterscotch sauce the human Yeah.
Matthew Amster-Burton 20:20
Yeah, the Ghiradelli caramel sauce is pretty good.
Molly 20:24
Oh my god. That is so good.
Matthew Amster-Burton 20:27
Okay, this is a keeper. I'm gonna be making this again for sure. Part of what makes it so good is that it's got a ton of salt. I was gonna choose Yeah, it's well salted. Yeah, so this is from a blog called just a taste. And I really just Googled this up and found this looked like a really simple recipe that had a lot of good reviews. And we'll link to it in the show notes. It's just easy homemade butterscotch sauce and it was really easy. So it is butter dark brown sugar large flake salt it calls for I feel like the salt got fully dissolved. I don't I don't think that's really necessary. But I did use molten salt, heavy cream and vanilla extract. Love like simplicity. It was so simple to make. It took like 10 minutes. The texture is great. The taste is fantastic. Like it absolutely blows away anything you're going to buy in a bottle.
Molly 21:13
It's wild to me how butterscotch tastes like butterscotch. Yeah, it's so doesn't taste like caramel. It's yeah, totally different flavor.
Matthew Amster-Burton 21:22
So okay, so I am I am fully on the butterscotch training. I like this. This kind of surprised me because like I would have expected I would have said well like it's only a little bit more trouble to make hot fudge and hot fudge is the best topping everyone knows this. I still think hot fudge is the best topping but also I think there are like occasions when I would choose this.
Molly 21:41
You know, it occurs to me as we're talking about butterscotch that maybe like 15 years ago, there was a real craze for a Nancy Silverton concept. The butterscotch budino that they served I believe at matzah in LA and a budino is like a pudding. Yeah. And it was basically like a butterscotch pudding. And I think it had like a canal of whipped cream on top and it was drizzled with butterscotch sauce or something that sounds good. And anyway, I remember everybody was you know, trying to trying to duplicate it. And I think around that time I think I put a recipe on my blog for like a butterscotch pota cram that I found I think in gourmet or so. So you want to you get in on that good, you know, good and it was just it didn't have any sauce on top. No whipped cream. I love a poEdit Yeah, po to cram. But butterscotch, that
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:35
sounds great. It was so good. So I think like a thing we sort of glossed over like you mentioned, like we hinted at it is that like when you're buying brown sugar, there's light brown sugar and dark brown sugar, and I never really know like which one I'm supposed to get for any particular recipe unless it specifies. But it seems like for butterscotch dark brown sugar is pretty important.
Molly 22:56
Well, it's gonna have more molasses flavor and more. Yeah, isn't
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:59
that good? Okay, so like just everyone should make if this sounds like your kind of thing, you should make this sauce. It's so easy. It's so tasty. Like we just put it on vanilla ice cream and it rolls so delicious. We'll link
Molly 23:12
to it in the show notes. Okay, all right. Our producer is Abby, sir. Catella.
Matthew Amster-Burton 23:18
And you can rate and review us wherever you get a podcast and
Molly 23:22
you can chat with other Spilt Milk listeners. Maybe you guys could talk about
Matthew Amster-Burton 23:28
um, maybe our listeners will will like divide up into into butterscotch and caramel sects. Maybe. And there'll be when I say earlier, a showdown at the hoedown something like that. I feel like I didn't get enough credit for that phrase just slipping out of my mouth.
Molly 23:44
Okay, here's your credit. Oh, thanks. Oh, wow,
Matthew Amster-Burton 23:48
a metal seal that I can put on my packaging to say that I'm official supplier to the hoedown. Okay, wait, wait, no, wait one more thing about oh doubt. What if what if, like, in one of those like teen apocalyptic novels, like there was like the the shadowy organization that controlled everything was called the hoedown.
Molly 24:12
Oh, that would be pretty great. The world would be so different. Okay. Yeah, so anyway, you can chat with with each other. Talk amongst yourselves at everything spilled. milk.reddit.co Yeah,
Matthew Amster-Burton 24:24
we didn't give the the address yet. There we go. So
Molly 24:27
check out the show notes for all kinds of important stuff today. The butterscotch blondies or brownies recipe we'll link to those
Matthew Amster-Burton 24:34
three episodes of the crown where where someone gets presented with and then their body smeared with butterscotch.
Molly 24:43
That's what the directors
Matthew Amster-Burton 24:45
Exactly. Okay. The scenes where we like we wore out Netflix by rewinding and watching
Molly 24:55
Oh, it was so hot. Like like third degree burns. Hi I'm Molly why is it
that really runs that's what they say about me you really run oh god it really runs
Transcribed by https://otter.ai