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Peanut Candy

A confection made by mixing roasted peanuts with melted sugar and cooling in buttered pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Peanut Candy

Why it works: Peanut and coffee share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 67 recipes. Both carry 2-ethyl-3,5-dimethylpyrazine, which smells roasted, earthy. The science ↓

Peanut Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shell and skin the peanuts.

  2. Grind the peanuts finely.

  3. While the sugar melts, heat the peanuts in the oven.

  4. Butter the pans.

  5. Keep the pans warm on the back of the stove.

Make the candy

  1. In a saucepan, heat the sugar over medium heat, stirring until it melts.

  2. Pour the hot peanuts into the melted sugar.

  3. Remove the saucepan from heat.

  4. Pour the mixture into the buttered pans.

  5. Let the mixture cool.

  6. Once cool, break into pieces.

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. Peanut + coffeetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together67 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-ethyl-3,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, earthy).

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

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

  3. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Coffee + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Peanuts
Form the bulk of the candy, providing body, texture and a toasted nutty flavor.
Granulated sugar
Melts to form the binding syrup that holds the peanuts together as the candy sets.

The step that matters

Pour the hot peanuts into the melted sugar. The sugar must be fully melted and the peanuts hot so the syrup stays fluid and coats evenly. Cold peanuts or a partly melted sugar would cool the mixture too fast, leaving it clumpy and hard to spread before it sets.

Swap the peanut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, sugar, 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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