Peanut brittle
Confection
Top 10 pairings
Peanut brittle is a hard, glassy confection of caramelised sugar set around roasted peanuts. Sugar (usually with corn syrup and a little water) is boiled to the hard-crack stage, the nuts and often a knob of butter are stirred in, a pinch of baking soda is added to aerate it, and the molten mass is poured out thin, cooled and snapped into shards — deep amber, sweet and buttery, with a toasty roasted-peanut crunch that shatters cleanly between the teeth.
Picking a good onedrag
Glassy, dry, sharply toastedTacky, clouded, rancid
Dry and glassyEveryday bestThe all-rounder: snack straight from the tin, smash to rubble over ice cream, or fold the shards through brownies and cookie dough.
Hold a shard to the lightStill clear amber at the body, the shine flattened off, the snapped edges beginning to round rather than cut
Snap a shardStill snaps clean on a duller click, and the fragments feel faintly tacky after a moment in the hand
Smell the broken faceStill sweet and nutty, though the deep toasted note has flattened back towards plain boiled sugar
The pack and the labelA sealed supermarket pack, dated, the pieces still moving freely with no syrup gathering at the seams