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Peanut Candy

A sweet candy made by caramelizing sugar with chopped peanuts and butter.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Pour the sugar into a pan and stir constantly until it turns brown and lumps.

  2. Melt the sugar into a syrup.

Set the brittle

  1. Add the chopped peanuts and mix well.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered pan.

Cool and cut

  1. Cut into squares once cooled.

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. 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

White sugar
Melts and browns to form the syrup that hardens into a brittle, glassy candy as it cools.
Peanuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavor throughout the candy.

The step that matters

Browning the sugar. Sugar can go from pale to burnt very quickly over direct heat. Stir constantly and remove it as soon as it reaches an even brown, because overcooked sugar turns bitter and loses its clean, brittle snap.

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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