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Dessert

Peanut Brittle

A sweet candy made from sugar, glucose, water, butter, vanilla, peanuts, baking soda, and cooked to a hard brittle consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Peanut Brittle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 275°F (135°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the syrup

  1. Combine sugar, glucose, and water in a saucepan over high heat.

  2. Stir until the mixture begins to boil, then wipe down the sides of the pan.

  3. Cook until a candy thermometer reads 275°F (135°C).

Add peanuts and finish

  1. Add peanuts and continue stirring until they are golden brown.

  2. Add baking soda just before pouring the mixture out onto a greased surface.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Vanilla + peanuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the crisp, brittle sweet base as the syrup cooks and hardens.
Glucose
Interferes with sugar crystals, keeping the brittle smooth rather than grainy.
Raw peanuts
Provide the main body, and their browning in the hot syrup adds nutty flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the hot syrup to release gas, aerating the brittle and lightening its texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a more tender bite.
Vanilla
Adds aroma that rounds out the sweetness of the candy.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda. Baking soda reacts vigorously with the hot syrup and foams up quickly. Adding it just before pouring traps the gas in the candy, so it stays light and porous. Adding it too early lets the foam collapse and the reaction is lost.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, vanilla. 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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