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Dessert

Soft Peanut Buttercups

A confection of molasses, glucose, butter, roasted peanuts, and sugar, formed into sticks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Soft Peanut Buttercups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a copper kettle, combine molasses, glucose, and butter, then stir and cook until it reaches the soft ball stage.

  2. Add the roasted and crushed peanuts, ensuring the skins are removed, and let the mixture sit on a floured marble surface to keep warm.

Make the sugar

  1. In a separate pot, cook the sugar, water, and cream of tartar until it reaches 335°F (170°C).

  2. Pour the sugar mixture onto an oiled slab, and as it cools, fold it together and add a pinch of vanillin crystals, then pull it until it is partly pulled.

Shape and cut

  1. Twist out the air and form it into a flat piece on the table near the warm batch.

  2. Roll up the peanut mixture and lay it on the pulled sugar mixture, folding the latter around it.

  3. Pull out into sticks as directed in the recipe for Filbert Buttercups, and cut using a machine.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deep flavour to the chewy base.
Glucose
Keeps the sugar soft and smooth by limiting crystallisation.
Roasted peanuts
Provide the nutty flavour and the bulk filling of the candy.
Crystal a sugar
Forms the main sweet structure of the outer candy shell.
Cream of tartar
Acidity that helps prevent the sugar from crystallising too much.

The step that matters

Cooking the sugar to 335°F (170°C). Sugar must reach the exact temperature to set to the right firmness. Too little heat leaves the candy sticky, while too much makes it hard and brittle once cooled.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, butter, sugar, cream, flour. 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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