Skip to main content
Dessert

Peanut Candy

A sweet candy made from sugar, corn syrup, peanuts, butter, vanilla, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Peanut Candy

Why it works: Corn and peanut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 346 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Peanut Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Combine sugar, corn syrup, and water in a saucepan.

  2. Cook until the mixture bubbles.

  3. Add butter and peanuts.

  4. Continue cooking until the nuts turn brown and their skins crack.

  5. Remove the saucepan from heat.

  6. Stir in vanilla extract and add baking soda.

  7. Pour the mixture immediately onto buttered plates.

Finish

  1. Once cool, stretch out the candy.

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. Corn + peanuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together346 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Peanut + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,176 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

White sugar
Provides sweetness and, when cooked, the brittle candy structure once it sets.
Corn syrup
Helps prevent crystallization, keeping the candy smooth rather than grainy.
Baking soda
Reacts with the hot sugar syrup, releasing gas that makes the candy light and airy.
Shelled raw peanuts
Add nutty flavor and crunch, browning further as the mixture cooks.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda. Baking soda must be added at the end and worked in quickly, because it releases gas that foams the hot syrup; if it is added too early or the mixture cools, the candy will not puff properly.

Swap the peanut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, syrup, 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.

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesCorn CakesCorn Cakes22 recipes