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Peanut Brittle
2 cups chopped roasted nuts 3 cups granulated sugar Put sugar in frying pan. Stir over slow fire. It will lump, then gradually melt. When pale coffee color, and clear, add nuts and pour quickly on greased tin. When cold break into pieces.
A two-ingredient brittle made by dry caramel rather than the syrup-and-soda method most modern recipes use. The result is denser and glassier than aerated brittle, and the whole thing hinges on how you handle the melting sugar.
- The hinge: dry caramelThree cups of sugar melting alone in a pan will clump into hard lumps before it liquefies, exactly as the recipe warns. Keep the heat low and stir steadily; rushing it scorches the melted portion while the lumps are still solid, and burnt caramel is bitter beyond rescue.
- "Pale coffee color"Roughly the light-amber caramel stage, somewhere around 340-350F if you are using a thermometer; light amber, not mahogany. Sugar can go from amber to burnt very quickly, so pull the pan as soon as the color looks right.
- Pan choice"Frying pan" here means a heavy skillet, ideally cast iron or thick stainless. A thin pan gives hot spots and unevenly burnt sugar.
- Warm the nutsTwo cups of cold nuts dropped into 340F sugar will chill it and stiffen the mass before you can pour. Heat them in a low oven while the sugar melts and they will fold in cleanly.
- "Greased tin"A rimmed baking sheet, buttered, or a silicone mat. Warm the sheet slightly so the caramel spreads thin before it sets; it stiffens quickly once poured, so tilt it out at once.
- TextureWith no baking soda, corn syrup or butter, this sets hard and clear rather than light and porous. It is closer to a nut praline slab than to the puffed brittle sold in candy shops.
- YieldRoughly 2 lb of candy. Store in an airtight tin with waxed paper between layers; humidity turns the surface tacky within a day in an open dish.
- CleanupFill the pan with water and bring it to a boil rather than chipping at the hardened sugar.
Dry-caramel nut candies are often said to predate the puffed, soda-leavened brittle familiar today, and the technique — melting sugar alone, stirring in nuts, pouring on a greased surface — is generally traced to the French praline method applied to whatever nut was cheap locally. In the United States that increasingly meant peanuts, which by the early twentieth century were a bulk commodity crop of the Southeast and among the least expensive nuts a household could buy. A recipe like this one — two ingredients, no thermometer, no corn syrup — is aimed at home confectionery rather than the professional trade. The instruction to judge doneness by the color of pale coffee is the period's standard substitute for a candy thermometer, which was available but far from universal in a home kitchen.