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Peanut Butter Fudge

A sweet fudge made with brown sugar, granulated sugar, milk, vanilla, and peanut butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Peanut Butter Fudge

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fudge base

  1. Stir milk and sugars in a saucepan over medium heat until boiling.

  2. Stop stirring and let it boil until a soft ball forms when tested in cold water.

Finish and set

  1. Let the mixture cool, then add Beech-Nut Peanut Butter and vanilla, and beat until creamy.

  2. Pour into a buttered pan and mark 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.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Vanilla + peanuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + peanuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,048 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Adds moisture and a caramel-like depth of flavour to the fudge.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the fudge and helps form its crystal structure as it cools.
Milk
Dissolves the sugars and adds richness and softness to the fudge.
Beech-nut peanut butter
Provides fat and peanut flavour, making the fudge smooth and creamy.

The step that matters

Stop stirring while the mixture boils. Stirring during boiling can encourage sugar crystals to form, leading to a grainy rather than smooth fudge. Letting it boil undisturbed helps the syrup reach the soft ball stage cleanly.

Swap the peanut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, vanilla, 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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