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Dessert

Peanut Candy

A sweet candy made from peanuts and sugar, baked into a thin sheet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Peanut Candy

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 Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the peanuts finely and sprinkle with a little salt.

  2. Melt the sugar in a saucepan.

  3. Add the chopped peanuts to the melted sugar.

Shape and finish

  1. Pour the mixture onto a buttered sheet of tin.

  2. Roll it out with a rolling pin until thin.

  3. Crease it.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Peanut + sugartop 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

Peanuts
Provide the main body and nutty flavour of the candy.
Sugar
Melts to form the brittle candy base that holds the peanuts together.

The step that matters

Rolling the mixture thin. The mixture hardens quickly as it cools, so it must be rolled while still warm and pliable; if it sets first, it will crack or resist shaping.

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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