19 September: Butterscotch

Today is National Butterscotch Pudding Day: 10 things you didn't know about butterscotch:

1. The main ingredients are Butter and brown Sugar. However, some recipes call for corn syrup, cream, vanilla or Salt. In the 19th century it was made with treacle or molasses rather than with brown sugar. An issue of the Liverpool Mercury in 1848 gave the recipe for “Doncaster butterscotch” as “one pound of butter, one pound of sugar and a quarter of a pound of treacle, boiled together."
2. In 1855, F. K. Robinson's Glossary of Yorkshire Words explained Butterscotch as "a treacle ball with an amalgamation of butter in it".
3. Why is it called butterscotch? Nobody knows for sure. "Scotch" can mean to cut or score something, and butterscotch needs to be scored before it gets to hard so it can be divided into pieces. Another theory is that "scotch" derived from "scorch" as making it involves heating it up rather a lot. Another meaning of "Scotch" is an adjective relating to Scotland.
4. That said, butterscotch was first produced in Doncaster, England rather than in Scotland. A confectioner named Samuel Parkinson began making it there in 1817 and it soon became one of the town's best known exports.
5. Parkinson used the Doncaster Church as their trademark. They advertised their product as "Royal Doncaster Butterscotch" or "The Queen's Sweetmeat", since in 1851 the sweets got some publicity when Queen Victoria was given a tin of the stuff when she visited Yorkshire. Parkinson’s butterscotch was by appointment to the royal household after that and has since been given as a gift to Princess Elizabeth, then the Duchess of Edinburgh, in 1948, and to Anne, Princess Royal in 2007.
6. Parkinson's used to claim that butterscotch was "the best emollient for the chest in the winter season".
7. Butterscotch pudding, the foodstuff celebrated today, doesn't contain any actual butterscotch but rather the flavour of brown sugar and butter. Butterscotch pudding is a type of custard popular in the USA.
8. The difference between butterscotch and caramel is that caramel is made with white sugar.
9. It's possible to get butterscotch chips which can be used in cookies like the chocolate ones; and there's also a butterscotch liqueur.
10. The largest butterscotch candy ever was made by the Nidar factory in Trondheim, Norway in 1997. It weighed 1.6 tonnes (3,527 lb) and measured 1.54 m (5.02 ft) x 1.54 m (5.02 ft) x 45 cm (17.7 in).

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