Butter is one of the most versatile cooking staples known to man. You can use it in savory dishes and in sweet ones, in everything from steaks to sauces to baked goods. There's very little butter can't do.
The only problem is, because it appears everywhere, there's a lot of different things with "butter" in the name. Gooey butter cake, buttermilk, butter chicken, buttercream -- these are all totally different items despite all having some aspect of butter to them. But hey, at least if you've got two different flavors of ice cream with "butter" in the name, like butterscotch and butter pecan, those have to be pretty similar right?
Actually, no, not at all. Butterscotch and butter pecan are wildly different, and it comes down to how they're made. In fact, butter is really the only ingredient they share (other than the basic ice cream components), and the only point of flavor overlap between the two. Beyond that, there's little they have in common.
Butter pecan is a classic staple of American Southern desserts, a decadent flavor whose primary drawback is that it might overwhelm you with its richness. It's made by taking pecans and toasting them in butter -- that's where the name comes from -- in order to bring out depth of flavor. You'll see things like butter pecan pie or butter pecan fudge, but the most common application is, of course, butter pecan ice cream, made by combining those butter-toasted pecans with vanilla.
It's now one of the classic American ice cream flavors. Not quite in the same ubiquitous category as vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate, but certainly in the next tier along with flavors like Rocky Road and pistachio. Interestingly, we don't actually know where it came from; there's a legend that it was the result of Black Americans not being permitted to eat vanilla ice cream during the Jim Crow era, but there's no actual evidence to back that up.
Butterscotch Involves Brown Sugar And Butter
Butterscotch, meanwhile, is a lot closer to toffee and caramel than anything else. All of those are made by heating sugar until it caramelizes, but caramel is made with white sugar, while butterscotch and toffee are made using brown sugar and butter. This gives butterscotch a richness in common with butter pecan, but the flavor profile is totally different owing to a lack of nuts. Unlike butter pecan, we have a much clearer sense of where butterscotch came from: 19th century England, possibly as early as 1817. It was originally a type of hard candy, but as time has gone on, people have experimented with ways to incorporate the flavors into other desserts, including ice cream.
Though butterscotch and butter pecan have similar names, don't let that fool you. Both have the richness inherent to butter, but beyond that, they're not very much alike. They're both pretty tasty, though.
Simply put, butter pecan is a flavor that merges the nutty notes of pecan with rich butter and a hint of sweet vanilla extract. The distinctive flavor of the pecan is hard to pinpoint – even for experts – but is perhaps best described as having sweet, fat, and roasted undertones.
Butter Pecan-Flavored Treats Tend To Be More Crunchy Than Chewy. Pralines and cream ice cream often features actual praline candy pieces mixed in with the cream, providing a chewy surprise in every bite. You can also add caramel sauce to the ice cream mixture, making for a perfectly gooey, fudgy dessert.
It combines the nutty flavor of fresh pecans with roasted pecan undertones and the distinct flavor of sweet vanilla. Many butter pecan recipes you find will tell you to roast your pecans with butter and sugar. The sugar is added during the ice cream-making process.
Butter pecan flavor, on the other hand, combines pecans, butter, and vanilla. The vanilla flavoring makes a big difference here — it distinguishes butter pecan as vanilla-forward, while pralines are more caramel sugar-forward.
Is butterscotch the same as butter pecan? No, they are not the same. Butterscotch is a sauce made by mixing brown sugar and melted butter together and cooking until it achieves a caramel-like consistency. It doesn't have any nuts.
People who are 18-34 years old were more likely to prefer cookies 'n creme (14%) and chocolate chip cookie dough (13%), while people 55 and up were far more likely to prefer butter pecan (17%) and vanilla (16%).
American pralines often include pecans as the nut of choice, which might explain why some people think of them as being similar in flavor to that other favorite Southern classic — butter pecan ice cream.
“Vanilla, Chocolate, and Strawberry are the ice cream flavors most often included in Americans' “Top 5” lists. However, Mint Chocolate Chip rounds out the top 3 when respondents are pressed for their #1 favorite,” they said.
Butterscotch is butter and brown sugar that has been slowly heated together to create a soft-crack candy. Just like caramel, the brown sugar molecules break down and, thanks to the addition of molasses in the sugar, caramelize into a richer, deeper flavor than classic caramel.
Similar to caramel, butterscotch is made by heating sugar. The main difference between the two is that butterscotch uses brown sugar instead of white. The ingredients are also combined in a slightly different order for butterscotch: your start out by melting butter with brown sugar.
Compared to butter pecan ice cream, praline ice cream is smoother in texture, owing to the fact that the nuts have already been transformed into pralines. Butter pecan ice cream keeps the actual pecan nuts intact, resulting in a crunchier texture.
The pecan flavor is rich and sweet enough to enjoy, so buying it with added sugar would do you no good. Unlike peanut butter and other kinds of nut butter, it doesn't affect your breath or leave a lingering aftertaste. Moreover, it isn't particularly oily like almond butter either.
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