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Snack

Salt Peanuts

Peanuts are blanched, skinned, stirred in hot melted butter, coated with melted gum arabic, and dusted with fine table salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Salt Peanuts

Ingredients

Directions

Blanch the peanuts

  1. Boil water in a large pot and add the peanuts.

  2. Blanch the peanuts until the skins come off easily.

  3. Remove the skins from the peanuts.

Fry and coat

  1. In a copper pan, heat the nucoa butter until boiling hot.

  2. Add the blanched peanuts and stir carefully until they are light brown.

  3. Drain the peanuts in a coarse sieve.

  4. Wipe out the pan.

  5. Pour enough melted gum arabic over the peanuts to just wet them and stir briefly.

  6. Sprinkle a handful of fine table salt over the peanuts.

Cool and finish

  1. Spread the peanuts on a marble surface to cool.

  2. Sift off any loose salt.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Peanuts
Form the crunchy body of the snack once blanched and fried.
Nucoa butter
Fries the peanuts, carrying heat for browning and adding richness.
Gum arabic (in the method)
Thinly coats the peanuts so the salt adheres to the surface.

The step that matters

Stir the peanuts until light brown. Frying in hot fat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction and sugar caramelization. Too little time leaves them pale, while too long burns the outside before the centres are cooked.

“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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