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
Prepare
Shell peanuts and remove skin; roll them fine or leave whole.
Make the brittle
Melt sugar in a frying pan, stirring constantly, and avoid caramelization.
Add peanuts and mix thoroughly; pour into an unbuttered shallow pan (whole peanuts may be placed with syrup poured over them).
Cool gradually and cut into squares while cooling.
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 a syrup that hardens as it cools, forming the brittle's crisp, glassy structure.
- Peanuts
- Provide the nutty body and crunch that the hardened sugar syrup holds together.
The step that matters
Melting the sugar without caramelizing it. Sugar left over heat too long or stirred unevenly can darken and turn bitter as it caramelizes. Constant stirring keeps the heat even so the syrup melts smoothly and stays light in flavour.
“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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