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 Bar
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare sugar as for chocolate creams and cook until it reaches a soft ball stage.
Add shelled peanuts to the sugar and stir until thickened.
Continue cooking until the mixture is good and brown.
After cooking, add ½ teaspoon of baking soda to make peanut crisps.
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
- Caramelizes as it cooks, providing sweetness, colour and the brittle base of the bar.
- Shelled peanuts
- Add nut flavour and bulk, and are held together by the cooked sugar.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the hot caramel to make it foam and lighten, giving the crisp a porous texture.
The step that matters
Continue cooking until the mixture is good and brown. Sugar darkens quickly near the end of cooking, so the caramel can burn if left unattended. Browning develops flavour, but over-browning turns it bitter.
“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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