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Dessert

Nut Brittle

Nut brittle made with sugar, glucose, nuts, butter, lemon extract, and water, cooked to a hard candy consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Nut Brittle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 295°F (146°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven and heat the nuts until warm.

Make the brittle

  1. In a kettle, combine sugar, glucose, and water. Stir until boiling, washing down the sides with a damp cloth.

  2. Insert a thermometer and cook until it reaches 295°F (146°C).

  3. Remove from heat, take out the thermometer, and add butter, salt, and lemon extract. Stir well.

  4. Stir in the warm nuts and scrape the mixture onto a greased surface.

  5. After 30 seconds, turn the batch upside down and pull it thin, similar to making peanut brittle.

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. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Nuts + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Lemon + nutstop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Forms the crisp, brittle candy structure as it cooks to temperature.
Glucose
Inhibits crystallization, keeping the candy smooth and preventing grainy texture.
Nuts
Provide the main body, crunch, and toasty flavor of the brittle.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender mouthfeel to the candy.

The step that matters

Cooking the syrup to 295°F (146°C). The syrup must reach the target temperature to set into a brittle rather than a soft or chewy candy. Stopping early leaves it sticky, while overcooking makes it bitter and dark.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, butter. 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.

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