Skip to main content
Dessert

Peanut Candy

A hard candy made from sugar, water, cream of tartar, butter, and peanut kernels.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Peanut Candy

Why it works: Walnut and peanut 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

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar and water in a saucepan.

  2. Dissolve cream of tartar in a little cold water and add it to the boiling mixture.

  3. Cook until a drop in cold water is brittle.

  4. Add the butter and cook for a few more minutes.

Finish and pour

  1. Stir in the peanut kernels and pour into 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. Walnut + peanuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the candy's body; as it cooks to a syrup and cools, it sets firm and brittle.
Cream of tartar
Adds acid that helps keep the sugar from recrystallizing, giving a smoother, less grainy candy.
Peanut kernels
Provide crunch, nutty flavor, and bulk throughout the set candy.
Butter
Adds fat for a softer bite, richer flavor, and a smoother finish.

The step that matters

Cooking until a drop is brittle in cold water. The final temperature of the syrup decides the texture. Stopping early leaves a sticky candy that won't set, while cooking too long makes it hard, dark, and bitter.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, butter, walnut. 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