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Dessert

Nut Candy

A brittle candy made from sugar, water, butter, and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Nut Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Dissolve sugar and cream of tartar in cold water.

  2. Place over heat and cook until brittle, stirring in butter.

Prepare the nuts

  1. Shell and rub off the inner skin of the nuts.

  2. Layer the nuts two deep in well-buttered tins.

Pour and finish

  1. Pour hot candy over the nuts and let it cool.

  2. Break into convenient 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.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cream + peanuttop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the sweet base that hardens into a brittle candy as it cooks.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that helps keep the sugar syrup smooth rather than grainy.
Butter
Adds richness and softens the candy's texture slightly.
Peanuts or other nuts
Provide crunch and toasty flavour throughout the brittle.

The step that matters

Cook until brittle. The sugar syrup must reach the hard, brittle stage to set firm once cooled. Stopping early leaves the candy sticky and soft, while cooking too long can scorch the sugar and make it bitter.

Swap the peanut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, 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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