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Dessert

Clear Peanut Candy

A clear candy made with sugar, water, cream of tartar, and peanuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Clear Peanut Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. In a griddle saucepan, combine sugar, boiling water, and cream of tartar.

  2. Boil rapidly without stirring until the mixture 'snaps' in ice water.

Assemble and cut

  1. Grease a small square pan and spread the peanuts evenly in it.

  2. Pour the candy mixture carefully over the peanuts.

  3. Avoid scraping the kettle when pouring out the candy.

  4. When partly cool, mark and cut into bars.

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

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

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

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

  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 sugar syrup that hardens into the candy's brittle, crisp body.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps prevent sugar crystals from forming, keeping the candy clear and smooth.
Peanuts
Provide crunch, nutty flavor and richness in the finished bars.

The step that matters

Boil rapidly without stirring until it snaps in ice water. Sugar syrup hardens into candy at a specific high temperature, so the snap test shows when it is done. Stirring can trigger sugar crystallization, which makes the candy cloudy and grainy instead of clear and brittle.

Swap the peanut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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