Why it works: Sugar and peanut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,545 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Peanut Brittle
Ingredients
Directions
Make the caramel
Place the sugar in a saucepan over medium heat.
Stir constantly until the sugar melts.
Add the peanuts and set
Quickly stir in the chopped peanuts until well mixed.
Pour the mixture onto a buttered platter and spread it thin.
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.
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Sugar + peanuttop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Sugar
- Melts into caramel that hardens as it cools, giving the brittle its crisp, sweet structure.
- Chopped peanuts
- Add crunch and a roasted, nutty flavor to the crisp caramel.
The step that matters
Quickly stir in the chopped peanuts. Melted sugar begins to harden as it cools, so the peanuts must be mixed in right after the sugar melts. Waiting lets the caramel set in the pan before the nuts are evenly distributed.
“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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