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Dessert

The Plebeian Peanut

Roasted peanuts coated with butter and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Peanut and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,754 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

The Plebeian Peanut

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the peanuts

  1. Parboil the peanuts until tender.

  2. Rub off the red skins from the peanuts.

  3. Spread the blanched peanuts on a baking dish.

Roast and season

  1. Drizzle with butter.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes until light brown.

  3. Remove from oven and salt while hot.

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. Peanut + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,754 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Green or unparched peanuts
Provide the main body of the snack, which softens when parboiled and turns crisp and nutty when roasted.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the peanuts brown evenly in the oven.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the surface of the peanuts while they are hot, so the salt sticks and tastes sharp against the nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Remove from oven and salt while hot. Salt needs warm, slightly oily surfaces to cling. If the peanuts cool before salting, the salt falls off and the seasoning is uneven.

“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.

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