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Dessert

Burnt Peanuts

A confection of sugar-coated peanuts cooked until caramelized.

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 ↓

Burnt Peanuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sugar coating

  1. In a kettle, combine 6 pounds of sugar and enough water to dissolve it. Cook until it reaches 252°F (122°C).

  2. Add 5 pounds of shelled peanuts and stir until the sugar begins to grain.

  3. Quickly remove the kettle from heat and stir until all the mixture is grained.

  4. Pour the mixture into a sieve and shake off the excess sugar.

Build the coating again

  1. In the kettle, add 1 pound of fresh sugar and more water. Cook as before.

  2. Remove from heat, add the peanuts, and stir until it grains again.

  3. Pour into a sieve, shake out the sugar, and combine it with 1 pound of fresh sugar and water in the kettle.

Color and finish

  1. Color the mixture pink and finish as before. Do not shellac or polish the peanuts.

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
Cooks into a syrup that grains and forms the crisp coating around each peanut.
Shelled peanuts
Form the core that the grained sugar coating clings to.

The step that matters

Removing the kettle from heat at the right moment. Sugar syrup keeps cooking off the heat, so it can darken or burn quickly. Stirring right after removing it encourages the sugar to crystallize into a grainy coating before it overcooks.

“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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