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Dessert

Peanut Butter Cream Candy

A sweet candy made by cooking sugar and water, then adding peanut butter and pulling until creamy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 Butter Cream Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Combine sugar and water in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Cook until the mixture reaches the pulling candy stage.

Pull and finish

  1. Pour the mixture onto a marble slab or platter.

  2. Add peanut butter and pull the candy until it becomes creamy.

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

Granulated sugar
Forms the candy's structure as it cooks into a syrup that sets firm when cooled.
Peanut butter
Adds fat and flavor, and its oil helps make the pulled candy smooth and creamy.

The step that matters

Cooking to the pulling candy stage. Sugar syrup must reach the right temperature to set into the correct texture. Too little cooking leaves the candy soft and sticky, while too much makes it hard and brittle.

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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