Name: Home Candy Making
Ingredients: Confectioner's powdered sugar; Nuts or fruit; Oil or washed butter; Porto Rico molasses or New Orleans molasses; Unsweetened chocolate or confectioner's sweet chocolate

Why it works: Nuts and chocolate work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 440 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Home Candy Making

Ingredients

Confectioner's powdered sugar
Nuts or fruit
Oil or washed butter
Porto Rico molasses or New Orleans molasses
Unsweetened chocolate or confectioner's sweet chocolate

Directions

Choose dry weather to make candy to avoid moisture absorption.
Use confectioner's powdered sugar for uncooked candies; ordinary powdered sugar can be a substitute.
Ensure nuts or fruit are thoroughly dry before using.
Slightly salt most nuts to enhance flavor.
Blanch and dry almonds in an open oven for easier pulverizing.
Grease tins with oil or washed butter for delicate candies.

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.

Nuts + chocolatetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together440 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,225 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,404 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter + chocolatetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,543 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Swap the nuts

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

Almondfits better
Pecansfits about as well
Peanutfits about as well
Nutsthe original

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