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Dessert

Peanut Butter Fudge

A chocolate peanut butter fudge made by cooking sugar, cocoa, milk, butter, and peanut butter until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 357 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Peanut Butter Fudge

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fudge

  1. Combine sugar, cocoa, and milk in a saucepan.

  2. Cook slowly until it forms a soft ball.

  3. Remove from heat and beat until it starts to thicken.

  4. Add peanut butter and vanilla.

  5. Beat until smooth.

Set and cut

  1. Pour into a buttered pan.

  2. Cool slightly.

  3. Cut into pieces.

  4. Let it finish cooking.

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. Cocoa + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Peanut + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and, as it cooks, the structure that sets the fudge.
Cocoa
Adds chocolate flavour and dark colour to the fudge.
Milk
Dissolves the sugar and adds moisture and creaminess to the fudge.
Peanut butter
Adds nutty flavour and fat, giving the fudge a smooth, rich texture.

The step that matters

Cook to a soft ball, then beat. Cooking the sugar mixture to the soft-ball stage sets how firm the fudge will be. Beating it as it cools makes the crystals fine, so the fudge turns smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the peanut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cocoa, milk, butter, vanilla. 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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