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Dessert

Peanut Candy

A sweet confection made by coating chopped peanuts in caramelized sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Peanut Candy

Why it works: Peanut and sugar 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 Candy

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peanuts

  1. Shell the peanuts.

  2. Remove the brown peel.

  3. Chop the peanuts finely.

Make the candy

  1. Place the sugar in a hot, dry skillet.

  2. Stir the sugar continually with an iron spoon.

  3. Continue stirring until the sugar lumps and then becomes liquid.

  4. Immediately pour in the chopped peanuts. Mix well.

  5. Pour the mixture onto buttered tins.

  6. Mark into squares when cool.

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. Peanut + sugartop 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

Peanuts
Provide the main body and crunch of the candy, held together by the melted sugar.
Granulated sugar
Melts to a liquid that hardens on cooling, binding the peanuts into a brittle candy.

The step that matters

Stirring the dry sugar until it fully melts. Dry sugar melts unevenly and can scorch before it liquefies. Constant stirring spreads the heat so the sugar melts evenly without burning, which gives a clear, properly set brittle.

“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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