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Dessert

Peanut Candy

A sweet brittle made from sugar, water, cream of tartar, butter, and peanuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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. Boil 2 cups of sugar with ½ cup of water.

  2. Dissolve ½ teaspoon of cream of tartar in a little cold water and add it to the mixture.

  3. Boil until it becomes brittle when dropped in cold water.

  4. Add a piece of butter the size of a hickory nut and boil for a few more minutes.

Pour and cool

  1. Pour the mixture over the peanuts spread in a buttered tin.

  2. Set aside to cool.

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. Cream + spreadtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together96 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + spreadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the candy's sweet body, hardening into brittle glass as the syrup cools.
Cream of tartar
Its acidity helps prevent the sugar from forming grainy crystals.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother bite to the finished candy.
Peanuts
Provide the nutty flavour and crunch throughout the brittle.

The step that matters

Boil until brittle in cold water. Sugar syrup sets hard only when cooked far enough to drive off most of its water. Stopping early leaves the candy sticky, while overcooking scorches the sugar, making it bitter and dark.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Peanutthe original

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