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Dessert

Peanut Nougat

A confection made by mixing melted sugar with chopped peanuts and cooling into squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and peanut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,545 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Peanut Nougat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the peanuts and place them in a buttered tin.

Make the nougat

  1. Melt the sugar in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly until fully melted.

  2. Pour the melted sugar over the chopped peanuts.

  3. Allow to cool.

  4. Mark into squares.

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. Sugar + peanuttop 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

Sugar
Melts to a liquid that sets into the firm, brittle structure binding the peanuts.
Peanuts
Provide the bulk and crunch, and their oils add richness and flavor to the set candy.

The step that matters

Stirring the sugar until fully melted. Sugar that is not fully melted can recrystallize as grainy lumps when it cools, so constant stirring over medium heat helps it dissolve evenly into a smooth, clear syrup before it sets.

“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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