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Nut Molasses Candy

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Nuts and peanut share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Nut Molasses Candy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, heat the molasses until it thickens.

  2. Once thickened, stir in the nuts of your choice.

  3. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered tin.

  4. Allow to cool, then cut into squares or work it for a yellower color.

  5. If using peanuts, ensure the red inner skin is removed to avoid bitterness.

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. Nuts + peanuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together81 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Peanut + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Nuts + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. 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

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Flaxseedfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, peanut, walnut, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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