Butterscotch is better with butter, and Scotch

"I'll have a butterscotch sundae, I guess."


I've always been fascinated with the use of butterscotch chips in most recipes for butterscotch pudding, including this well-rated one from very trustworthy Food and Wine. Does authentic butterscotch flavor really only come from a plastic bag from Nestle? Is butterscotch--unlike deep, dark, dangerously close to burnt caramel-- a pure nostalgia trip? (As so many sweets are.) Butterscotch is a mellow, cloying comfort taste. And, apparently, impossible to reproduce. A pure memory taste.

But, like many things, it can't be recreated but can be vastly improved with time, technique and a little booze.

Butterscotch for Adults:
Make a caramel sauce. (David Lebovitz has the best instructions, though I like wet technique and he prefers dry; he gives intstructions for both.) Don't go quite as dark as you would with caramel; go to just when it seems ready as opposed to a little past and closer to the edge of burnt, as you should for a good caramel. After you add butter, add a combination of cream and milk, and add much more than you would for caramel sauce. Finish off with some spicy Scotch whiskey (J&B instead of Dewar's, but anything will do.) Then turn the heat back up for a few seconds, whisk the Scotch flavor in and mellow the alcohol shock, and then cool.