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Dessert

Ground Nut Candy

A sweet candy made by boiling molasses, brown sugar, and butter with ground nuts until thick, then cooling to harden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Molasses and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Ground Nut Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the mixture

  1. Boil molasses, brown sugar, and butter together in a pot.

  2. When the mixture thickens, add the ground nuts.

  3. Continue boiling for 15 minutes.

Cool and set

  1. Pour the mixture into a shallow dish to cool and harden.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + nutstop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + nutstop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 recipes

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

  5. Molasses + nutstop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together206 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Provides most of the sweetness, dark color, and a sticky, chewy body.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and caramel flavor, and helps the candy harden as it cools.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother texture and richer flavor, and keeps the candy from being too brittle.
Ground nuts
Add crunch, nutty flavor, and bulk to the candy.

The step that matters

Continue boiling for 15 minutes. Boiling drives off water and concentrates the sugars. Stopping too early leaves the candy soft and sticky, while boiling too long can make it hard to pour and brittle once cool.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, 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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