Butterscotch

Biography & Overview

Butterscotch is a type of confection whose primary ingredients are brown sugar and butter. Some recipes include cream, vanilla, and salt. The earliest known recipes, in mid-19th century Yorkshire, used treacle (molasses) in place of, or in addition to, sugar.
Butterscotch is similar to toffee, but the sugar is boiled to the soft crack stage, not hard crack. Often credited with their invention, S. Parkinson & Sons of Doncaster made butterscotch boiled sweets and sold them in tins, which became one of the town's best-known exports. They became famous in 1851 after Queen Victoria was presented with a tin when she visited the town. Butterscotch sauce, made of butterscotch and cream, is used as a topping for ice cream (particularly in the Middle East).
The term "butterscotch" is also often used more specifically for the flavour of brown sugar and butter together, even if the actual confection butterscotch is not involved, such as in butterscotch pudding (a type of custard).