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Peanut Brittle

A sweet brittle made by caramelizing sugar with peanuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Peanut and meat work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 119 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Peanut Brittle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Place 2 cups of granulated sugar in an iron skillet over medium heat.

  2. Stir constantly until the sugar is completely melted.

  3. Immediately remove from heat and add ½ teaspoon of baking soda.

Assemble and set

  1. Grease a pan and distribute the peanut meats evenly in it.

  2. Pour the syrup over the peanuts and let it cool.

  3. Once cooled, break into pieces.

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 + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  3. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. 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
Melts and then hardens as it cools, forming the crisp, brittle structure and sweetness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the hot syrup to release gas, lightening the texture and making the brittle less dense.
Peanut meats
Provide crunch and a nutty flavor that contrasts with the hard sugar.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda. Baking soda reacts with the hot syrup and releases carbon dioxide, which makes the brittle foam and turn light rather than dense. Adding it off the heat lets the foam form without the sugar scorching.

Swap the peanut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, meat, 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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