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Dessert

Peanut Brittle

A hard candy made from glucose, sugar, water, peanuts, baking soda, salt, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Peanut Brittle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine glucose, sugar, and water in a kettle; heat and stir until dissolved.

  2. Cook the mixture to 240°F (115°C).

Cook the brittle

  1. Add the peanuts and continue to cook until they are done and the mixture turns golden-brown.

  2. Remove from heat, add baking soda, and stir well.

Spread and finish

  1. Pour onto a greased slab and spread thin with a palette knife.

  2. Wearing gloves, stretch the mixture thin by tossing it over with your hands.

  3. Once cool, break into pieces and place in trays.

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).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. 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

Glucose
Keeps the sugar from crystallising, giving the brittle a smooth, non-grainy texture.
Sugar
Forms the main brittle structure and sweetness as the syrup cooks and hardens.
Spanish peanuts
Provide the nutty flavour and crunchy body of the finished brittle.
Baking soda
Releases gas when stirred into the hot syrup, making it light and brittle rather than dense.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda off the heat. Baking soda reacts with the hot syrup and foams up quickly, so it must be stirred in well and the mixture spread at once before it sets, otherwise it stays uneven.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Filbertfits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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