It's found in chocolate bars. It's found in ice creams. It's found in truffles. It's found rock solid. It's found in liquid form for hot and even cold beverages. What is it? Why it's butterscotch! But it's also toffee! And food historians think toffee preceded butterscotch! But something else even preceded them! Something called... tablet!

That's right. A candy confectionary called tablet. Or in some circles, the Scottish Tablet. No one's quite sure where this confectionary originated, because there's some mention of it in ancient Oxford English Dictionaries of centuries ago under the "tablet" name referring to food in the form of a small disc or lozenge, dating to 1690.

Recipes for "tablet" started showing up in the early 1700s, and it was derived from sugar and milk cooked together, and then other elements, like citrus or ginger were added. The first solid recipes date to 1829, found in the Cook and Housewife's Manual (1829 Edition); the recipe called for adding cinnamon, or ginger, or the grating of 2 lemons, to a pound of sugar and 3 teacups' full of cream. Mix, let boil to a rapid boil, pour out on a marble slab, and cut quickly into small squares before it cools and hardens.

Toffee, which came before butterscotch (by most accounts) came out of the making of "tablet". It was also called water taffy, or taffee, or even molasses candy. It involved the use of molasses (called treacle in England at the time) along with refined sugar, a tiny bit of butter and a little bit of flour. Sometimes water was used. It was first made in the early 19th century, and by 1850 was a commonly known recipe. Later on treacle and refined sugar was replaced by brown sugar. The mixture was cooked to what's called a "hard crack" stage for sugar candies (cooks and bakers will know this), and depending on the recipe, the final product could be hard or malleable (shapable) once cooled. The heavy caramelization of the sugars, along with the butters and its interaction with flour all work to give toffee a very distinctive taste. It can also be aerated during its cooking stage through the inclusion of baking soda and vinegar to create a type of honeycomb final product. If you ever ate a Crunchie bar (found in Canada and the UK - dunno about the US), you've had aerated, honeycomb toffee. It's that melt in your mouth kinda toffee.

Canada in particular seemed to have a love for all things toffee; along with the aforementioned Crunchie bar, when I was growing up, a common kid's candy bar in the store was Mackintosh's made by a company called Rowntree. Unfortunately, Nestle (a company I personally boycott) bought that brand in 1988, and the Mackintosh bar went away (except to come back for limited releases). As a kid, I loved that candy; as a (slightly older) adult, I fear it and the maximum teeth-holding grip it has :D

Modern day toffee is actually more like a soft butterscotch (minus one ingredient) than actual toffee of yonder days. It's now made with a lot more butter, most modern recipes completely eschew the use of flour. I also see a lot of "toffee" recipes that use white sugar and/or cream, which really isn't toffee at all - it's caramel sauce! There's a variant called water toffee or salt water taffy, which can often be found in ocean coast towns like those in Oregon, with a giant rainbow of flavours and tastes offered. The irony here is, salt-water taffy (unadulterated with other flavours) is a lot closer to history's "toffee" (except for the salt part) than modern day cook show toffee recipes. But speaking of butterscotch...

Butterscotch probably came like 5 years after toffee did. It's funny - when I was growing up, my Dad told me butterscotch was toffee, but with Scotch whisky included! I actually believed that up until my late 20s! Of course, there's no Scotch in butterscotch, nor is there peat, a staple flavour of many Scotches. What it is, is a very similar recipe to toffee, with three key differences. One, the amount of butter used in the 1850s recipes was a lot more than what toffee called for. Second, it almost always included the zest of lemons. Third, it is cooked to a lower temperature (soft crack stage) compared to toffee. This results in a different taste from the caramelization process.

Back in 1855, you'd make butterscotch by boiling a pound of brown sugar and 5oz of butter for 20 minutes, then stir in the zest of two lemons, letting it all boil more until the lemon is basically dissolved. Early on, it was exclusively a hard candy, but variants have come along since to make softer versions. For instance, milk or cream is frequently used in most modern recipes, and a requirement if you want malleable or pourable butterscotch.

I see, in DIY posts here and elsewhere, people say "you got no butterscotch? Just mix brown sugar and butter, it's the same thing". That, I have to admit, makes me cringe just a tiny bit. True oldchool butterscotch should include a hint of lemon and a caramelized sensation of taste. Even modern butterscotch is expected to have that "caramelized" sensation of taste. Wait, doesn't brown sugar have that? Nope.

Brown sugar is just unrefined sugar that has a moderate amount of molasses incorporated (a byproduct in making sugar); no caramelization via high heat application has happened. Caramelization is a change in flavours applied to sugar as it is heated up. Sugar changes to a liquid form at 320F, and fully caramelizes at 340F, via the result of a chemical breakdown and change of the sugar. It radically changes the taste of the sugar into what we know as "caramel". Brown sugar on its own is not caramel.

One more note - caramelized and "caramel" the confectionary are not necessarily the same thing, though many people confuse plain caramelization of sugars with "caramels". I sure did until I actually started caramelizing various sugars about a decade ago. Soft chewy caramels use a lot of cream in the process of making the confectionary, and can be harder (still chewy) or softer depending on the amount of cream used. In essence caramels (the squares or the sauce you pour on apples) are basically modern day (not old school) toffee with cream.

Here's a TL:DR (I don't like TL:DRs but I'll do one for you)

• Toffee (old school): brown sugar, butter, flour, cooked to hard crack phase of caramelization.
• Toffee (current school): brown sugar, butter, cooked to hard ball or soft crack phase of caramelization.
• Butterscotch (old school): brown sugar, butter, zest of lemon, cooked to soft crack phase of caramelization.
• Butterscotch (current school): brown sugar, more butter, optional vanilla, cooked to soft crack phase of caramelization.
• Caramel: white sugar, milk, butter and sometimes vanilla, cooked to either soft ball, firm ball, or hard ball stages (all pre crack stages).

Hey man, I came here to vape

But you're here for the vaping info, aren't you! All my preamble was to give you a sense of how toffee and butterscotch are both similar, but also slightly different (and I did a side mention of caramel to confuse things more) and they have changed quite a bit though their short histories. And here's where I ask a serious confectionary fan's help - I have both Butterscotch and (English) Toffee from TPA; one I love, one I really don't like much. One I feel is relatively close to the real original deal, one makes me taste . . . plastic. Chemicals. Don't like it much.

The one I don't like is TPA's Butterscotch. I really want to find something a lot more authentic to true butterscotch, so I'm open to suggestions, esp. from folks who've had both real authentic butterscotch and a flavouring for eliquids that comes close. But I have found a way to smooth out TPA's butterscotch: I blend in some of TPA's caramel with some drops of EM. I haven't quite perfected my blend recipe yet, but will post it when I do.

TPA's English Toffee on the other hand is reasonably close to salt water taffy (unflavoured), less salt water taffy's slight salt content. It's not true English toffee, but something I can definitely work with. Unlike TPA's Butterscotch, the English Toffee is soft, approachable, and a complimentary flavouring. I would not build a recipe with this as the primary taste; it is an accent or a (slight) modifier.

As for what kind of vape recipes you could use butterscotch (a good butterscotch) or toffee in? Mostly they could interchange, but think of toffee as having little butter, slightly water based, more caramelized, and butterscotch is more butter, with maybe a tiny bit of lemon thrown in, which could preclude its use with some flavours. I like to think of butterscotch as toffee taken to 11.

All that said, both flavours work great with:

• Most Tobaccos. In my opinion, you can't harm a tobacco eliquid with TPA's English Toffee. If you had a legit butterscotch flavouring true to the original taste, I'd say the same for that.
• Chocolates and Cocoas. Chocolate and toffee (or chocolate and butterscotch) are matches made in heaven.
• Creams and Custards. In a way, you'd be making your variant of soft chewy caramels if you added toffee to creams (probably more so than using any caramel flavouring). If your goal is a pudding vape, look at either toffee or butterscotch to help you on the way
• Pomes or Drupe Fleshy Fruits. Apples are a natural with toffees and butterscotch, but it also plays incredibly well with pears. Try peaches, coconuts, cherries, apricots too.
• Nuts and Stones. Things like walnuts, almonds, pecans all play fantastic with both butterscotch and toffee.
• Vanilla. Some toffee and butterscotch recipes call for the addition of vanilla. You can do it too.
• Cinnamon. Another match made in heaven, though go light on the cinnamon in vape recipes (or heavy if you really want the cinnamon to jump out at you).
• Bananas. Yet another match made in heaven. Who doesn't pick butterscotch as one of the flavours on your DQ banana split!

I feel that toffee (especially the TPA version which is more like salt water taffy) is even more versatile because it is more basic. It should also play well with

• Any Fruit Flavour. Whatever is in your stable, from lychee to blueberries, try it with toffee and see where it goes.
• Caramel. It basically supercharges the caramel when mixed together.
• Whiskys, Bourbons, Brandies, Rums. I can't recommend butterscotch for these mixes (I've tried, even with my modified butterscotch blend), but toffee works fantastic with all the "browns" flavourings I have.

Afterword:

I almost didn't want to publish this one, for a couple of reasons. First, my research showed that finding a truly authentic butterscotch flavouring for vaping is very difficult currently; second, I only have TPA versions of both butterscotch and toffee; and third, and most important, both butterscotch and toffee are fairly young confectioneries that still have gone through a lot of changes over the decades; today's toffee was yesteryear's caramel, and so on. But in the end I did decide to write this up so you could see not all flavours are locked in stone, and some evolve (or devolve, depending on what you think of the current offerings). Also, both these flavours have the potential to add some nice complexity, mystery and a bit of savoury notes that compliment chocolates, but don't replace them.

I like the TPA English Toffee, though I would have called it no salt water taffy. TPA's butterscotch is kinda a disaster, and needs work to be called "butterscotch". IMO of course. As mentioned above, I'm on the hunt for a true authentic butterscotch flavour, so if you have any tips (and have tasted both the authentic culinary version as well as the vaping flavouring) please let me know!

Other links to my flavour histories:

Wintergreen

Marshmallow

Cinnamon

Bonus Cinnamon with Tonka Bean