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Peanut Butter Filling

A spreadable peanut butter mixture thickened with milk and confectioners' sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Peanut Butter Filling

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, cream together the peanut butter and milk.

  2. Gradually add confectioners' sugar until the mixture is thick enough to spread on cake.

  3. Stir until smooth.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Peanut + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,048 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Peanut + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,754 recipes

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Peanut butter
Provides fat and rich peanut flavour that carries the filling.
Milk
Loosens the peanut butter so it can be creamed into a smooth base.
Confectioners' sugar
Sweetens the filling and thickens it until it is spreadable.

The step that matters

Adding the confectioners' sugar gradually. Adding sugar all at once can leave lumps and make the filling either too stiff or too loose. Adding it in small amounts and stirring lets the sugar dissolve and thicken evenly.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Cocoafits better
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, sugar. 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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