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Peanut Candy

A sweet confection made from peanuts, molasses, butter, and sugar.

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

Why it works: Peanut and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 241 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Peanut Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the peanuts and set aside.

  2. In a pot, combine molasses, butter, and white sugar.

Make the candy

  1. Boil the mixture until it becomes brittle when dropped in cold water.

  2. Stir in the peanuts until well coated.

  3. Spread the mixture very thin on buttered pans.

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 + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 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 bulk and crunch of the candy.
Molasses
Forms the sweet, dark base that sets firm as it cooks.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture harden into brittle.
Butter
Adds richness and helps keep the candy from sticking to the pan.

The step that matters

Boiling until brittle. Boiling drives off water and concentrates the sugars, so the candy sets hard and brittle when cooled. Stopping too early leaves it soft and sticky, while cooking too long can scorch the molasses and make it bitter.

Swap the peanut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, walnut, butter, 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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