Skip to main content
Dessert

Hickorynut or Pecan Candy

A candied nut confection made with sugar, water, lemon rind, and hickorynut or pecan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Hickorynut or Pecan Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and water.

  2. Boil until thick or until a drop forms a brittle in cold water.

  3. Stir in the grated lemon rind and nut meats.

Set and cut

  1. Pour the mixture into a pan and let it cool.

  2. Once cool, cut into squares.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Lemon + meattop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,817 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Sugar + meattop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Dissolves and cooks into a thick syrup that hardens into the candy's body and sweetness.
Nut meats
Add crunch and a toasty, rich flavor that contrasts with the sweet syrup.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic citrus oils that brighten the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil until thick or until a drop forms a brittle in cold water. Sugar syrup sets according to how far its water has boiled off. Stopping too early leaves a soft, sticky candy, while cooking too long makes it hard and brittle or burnt.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, meat):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, meat. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More pecan candy recipes

Mississippi 3 See all 12 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes