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Dessert

Peanut Butter Fudge

A sweet fudge made with powdered sugar, milk, and peanut butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Peanut Butter Fudge

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fudge

  1. Mix powdered sugar, milk, and peanut butter in a saucepan.

  2. Place saucepan over medium heat and bring mixture to a vigorous boil.

  3. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Remove from heat, pour into a buttered pan, and let it cool.

Set and cut

  1. Cut into squares once set.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + peanuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,048 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Peanut + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,754 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Powdered sugar
Provides sweetness and, dissolved into the hot liquid, forms the bulk of the fudge's body.
Milk
Adds moisture so the sugar can dissolve and cook into a smooth, soft candy.
Peanut butter
Contributes fat and nutty flavour, giving the fudge its richness and texture.

The step that matters

Boil for the full 5 minutes while stirring. Sugar candy sets according to how much water has boiled off and how far the sugar has cooked. Stopping early leaves the fudge too soft to set, while constant stirring prevents scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Cocoafits better
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, 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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