Skip to main content
Dessert

Peanut Candy

A brittle candy made with sugar, water, cream of tartar, butter, and shelled peanuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Peanut Candy

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Peanut Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine 2 cups of sugar and 1 cup of water.

  2. Bring to a boil, then add 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar dissolved in a little water.

  3. Cook until the mixture is brittle when dropped in cold water.

Pour and set

  1. Grease a plate with butter and place the shelled peanuts on it.

  2. Pour the candy mixture over the peanuts.

  3. Once cool, cut into squares.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Butter + peanuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,754 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cream + peanuttop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together490 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the candy structure and provides sweetness; cooking it hard sets it crisp.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that helps prevent the sugar from crystallizing into grainy texture.
Shelled peanuts
Provide the crunchy texture and nutty flavor throughout the brittle.
Butter
Greases the plate so the set candy can be released and cut cleanly.

The step that matters

Cook until brittle in cold water. Sugar syrup must reach the hard-crack stage to set crisp. Stopping early leaves a sticky, chewy candy, while cooking too long can scorch the sugar and make it bitter.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Filbertfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, 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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes