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Dessert

Peanut Crisp

A sweet, crunchy peanut candy made by boiling sugar, water, and glucose, adding peanuts, baking soda, and cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and peanut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,545 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Peanut Crisp

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the candy

  1. Boil sugar, water, and glucose until it reaches the soft ball stage.

  2. Add the peanuts and continue boiling until the temperature reaches 290°F (143°C).

Add the soda and set

  1. Stir in the baking soda and let it dry.

  2. Set the mixture aside until it stops bubbling.

  3. Pour it out onto a slab and spread quickly.

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 + peanuttop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,545 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

Sugar
Forms the sweet, crisp candy base that hardens as it cools.
Glucose
Helps prevent sugar crystals from forming, keeping the candy smooth and brittle.
Peanuts
Provide the main body, bite, and nutty flavor of the crisp.
Baking soda
Releases gas into the hot syrup, creating bubbles that lighten the texture.

The step that matters

Spread quickly after the soda goes in. Baking soda makes the hot sugar mixture foam and expand into a light, airy crisp. As it cools it hardens fast, so it must be poured and spread quickly before it sets.

“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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