Skip to main content
Dessert

Sugared Pecans

A sweet pecan confection made by cooking sugar, butter, and pecans into a caramelized mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Meat and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,594 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Sugared Pecans

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and a little water in a saucepan to prevent burning.

  2. Boil until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Add the butter.

  4. Stir briskly until the mixture 'ropes'.

  5. Remove from heat.

  6. Stir until creamy.

Coat and set

  1. Add the pecan meats.

  2. Mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture onto a buttered dish.

  4. Let it cool.

  5. 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. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Meat + sugartop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Pecan meats
Form the main body of the candy, giving it nutty crunch and bite.
Sugar
Dissolves and cooks into a syrup that hardens into the candy's sweet, brittle coating.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother texture to the syrup as it is stirred.

The step that matters

Stir until creamy after removing from heat. Sugar syrup crystallises as it cools and is stirred. Stirring at the right moment, once the syrup has ropes and is off the heat, controls crystal size so the mixture turns creamy rather than grainy or hard.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes