Skip to main content
Dessert

Peanut Candy

A sweet confection made from peanuts and sugar, baked in a buttered tin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Peanut Candy

Why it works: Peanut and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,754 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Peanut Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shell, skin, and chop the peanuts finely. Add salt to the chopped peanuts.

Make the caramel

  1. In a granite saucepan, heat the sugar over medium heat, stirring constantly until it melts into a syrup.

  2. Remove the saucepan from heat and add the peanuts immediately.

Set and cut

  1. Pour the mixture into a warm, buttered tin and mark into squares before it cools.

  2. Allow to cool completely before cutting 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 + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,754 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Peanut + sugartop 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

Peanuts
Provide the crunchy texture and nutty flavour that make up the candy.
Sugar
Melts into a syrup that hardens as it cools, binding the peanuts together.

The step that matters

Add the peanuts immediately after removing the syrup from heat. Melted sugar begins to stiffen as it cools. Adding the peanuts while the syrup is still hot and fluid lets them coat and bind evenly before it sets, and the mixture must be poured before it cools too far.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Filbertfits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes