Butterscotch is a sweet made by boiling butter and sugar together until the mix is golden, then letting it harden — or a sauce with that same cooked-butter-and-sugar taste. You meet it as hard sweets, as a topping on ice cream, and as a flavour in puddings and biscuits. The second half is not Scotland and not Scotch whisky. Scotch here goes back to an old verb meaning to cut or nick: the candy was boiled, hardened, and scored so it would break into pieces. The usual story is that a sweet-maker called Parkinson's first sold it as a trademark; that is what people repeat, not something we can watch happen. The taste sits near caramel and toffee — all three are sugar cooked until brown — but butterscotch is the butter-forward one. It is informal food English; people also say butterscotch sauce, and sometimes stretch butterscotch to a warm light-brown colour.