Why it works: Pecans and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,962 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Grilled Pecans
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the syrup
Blanch the pecans.
In a saucepan, combine sugar and water and boil for a few minutes.
Add the pecans and let them sit for ten minutes.
Coat and cool
Remove from heat and stir until the mixture thickens and clings to the nuts.
Spread the nuts on wax paper to cool.
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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Pecans + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,962 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Pecans
- The nut base that the thickened sugar syrup coats, providing crunch and rich flavor.
- Sugar
- Dissolves into the syrup, which thickens and hardens into a sweet, crisp coating on the nuts.
The step that matters
Stirring the syrup off the heat until it thickens. As the syrup cools it loses water and stiffens, so it must be stirred until it clings to the nuts before it hardens. Stirring too little leaves the coating thin, and waiting too long leaves it clumped.
“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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