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Dessert

Peanut Candy

A hard candy made from sugar, water, butter, and roasted peanuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Peanut Candy

Why it works: Butter and peanut 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 ↓

Peanut Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brittle

  1. Boil sugar and water together without stirring until a little dropped into cold water forms a soft ball.

  2. Add butter and continue boiling until the candy hardens when dropped into cold water.

  3. Stir in peanuts.

  4. Pour the mixture into a buttered pan.

Finish

  1. Cut into squares once cooled.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + peanuttop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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
Forms the brittle candy structure as it cooks to a hard, glassy set.
Peanuts
Add crunch and nutty flavour throughout the hard candy.
Butter
Adds richness and helps keep the candy tender to bite.

The step that matters

Boiling to the hard-crack stage. Sugar syrup must reach the right temperature to set hard when cooled. Stopping early leaves a sticky or chewy candy, while overcooking can scorch it and give a bitter taste. Judging by the cold-water test takes care.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Filbertfits better
  4. Peanutthe original

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

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