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Dessert

Peanut Brittle

A hard candy made from sugar and peanuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Peanut and meat work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 119 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Peanut Brittle

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the sugar

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

  2. Once melted, add the peanut meats and mix well.

Set the brittle

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pan.

  2. If a porous texture is desired, stir in the baking soda before pouring.

  3. Allow to cool and 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.

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 + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together119 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. 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 and then hardens as it cools, forming the brittle's crisp, glassy structure and sweetness.
Peanut meats
Add crunch, nutty flavor, and body that stays firm within the set sugar.
Baking soda
Releases gas into the hot sugar, creating bubbles that make the brittle porous and lighter.

The step that matters

Heating the sugar until melted. Sugar can scorch quickly over direct heat once it liquefies. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and prevents hot spots from burning, which would make the brittle bitter and dark.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, meat, 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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