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Peanut-cocoanut Brittle

A sweet brittle made with glucose, sugar, water, peanuts, coconut, 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 coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 433 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Peanut-cocoanut Brittle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a kettle, combine glucose, sugar, and water.

  2. Place over heat and stir until dissolved.

  3. Cook until the mixture reaches 240°F (115°C).

Add the peanuts and coconut

  1. Add peanuts and stir until they are done and the mixture turns light brown.

  2. Incorporate chopped coconut, salt, and butter, mixing well.

Cool and serve

  1. Pour the mixture onto a greased slab and spread it out thin.

  2. Once cool, break into pieces and stack in trays for display.

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 + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together433 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Peanut + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,754 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + coconuttop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 crystallizing, giving the brittle a smooth, crisp texture.
Sugar
Forms the hard, brittle structure as the syrup cooks and cools.
Spanish peanuts
Add crunch and toasty flavor as they brown in the hot syrup.
Chip coconut
Adds chewy texture and a toasted, sweet coconut flavor.

The step that matters

Cooking the syrup to 240°F (115°C). Stopping at the right temperature controls how much water remains. Undercooked syrup stays sticky and won't set brittle, while overcooked syrup turns bitter and dark.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, coconut, 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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