Skip to main content
Dessert

Peanut Brittle

A sweet brittle made from brown sugar, molasses, butter, vinegar, peanuts, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Peanut Brittle

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine brown sugar, molasses, butter, and vinegar in a pot before heating.

  2. Boil the mixture until a drop in cold water becomes brittle.

  3. Stir in the roasted peanuts.

  4. Remove from heat and mix in the dissolved baking soda.

  5. Beat well, pour into a buttered dish, and cut into squares.

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 + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Vinegar + peanuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together443 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Brown sugar
Provides sweetness and the bulk of the candy's structure as it cooks to a hard set.
Molasses
Adds depth of flavour and moisture, and helps the candy turn brittle rather than chewy.
Baking soda
Reacts with the hot syrup to release gas, creating a light, airy, crisp texture.
Peanuts
Add roasted flavour and crunch throughout the brittle.

The step that matters

Boil until a drop in cold water becomes brittle. Sugar syrup sets according to its final temperature, so stopping too early leaves a sticky candy and boiling too long makes it bitter or burnt. The cold-water test shows when the syrup has reached the hard-crack stage needed for a brittle snap.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, molasses, butter, vinegar. 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

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesPeanut CandyPeanut Candy82 recipesMolasses Sponge CakeMolasses Sponge Cake9 recipes