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Dessert

Peanut Brittle

A sweet brittle made with sugar, roasted peanuts, butter, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Peanut and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,754 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Peanut Brittle

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Caramelize the sugar in a clean, smooth omelet pan over low heat until light brown.

  2. Add the butter and baking soda, and quickly beat them in.

  3. Stir in the peanuts and spread the mixture immediately onto an inverted tin.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. 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

Granulated sugar
Caramelizes to form the brittle's sweet, amber base that sets hard when cooled.
Shelled roasted peanuts
Provide crunch and a toasted, nutty flavor throughout the brittle.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the caramel and gives a richer, smoother bite.
Baking soda
Releases gas when beaten into hot caramel, creating a light, airy, brittle texture.

The step that matters

Spreading the mixture immediately. Hot caramel sets quickly as it cools, so it must be spread at once onto the tin before it hardens. Waiting lets it set unevenly and become too hard to spread thinly.

Swap the peanut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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