Peanut Brittle

At the WLBOTT Experimental Foods Division, we’ve been experimenting with peanut brittle.

Here’s the recipe we’ve ran our initial experiments with:

Ingredients:
1 cup of sugar (200g)
1/2 cup of light corn syrup (160g)
1 cup of peanuts (raw or dry roasted)(150g)
1/8 tsp of salt
1 Tbsp of butter, unsalted or salted (15g)
3/4 tsp of baking soda (3g)
1 tsp of vanilla extract

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Here’s the breakdown of our costs for one batch (HEB!)

Ingredient	Amount used	Typical package & price	Cost used
Granulated sugar	200 g	4 lb ≈ $3.25	$0.36
Light corn syrup	160 g	16 oz ≈ $2.75	$0.97
Peanuts	150 g	16 oz ≈ $3.00	$0.99
Salt	1/8 tsp	26 oz ≈ $0.75	<$0.01
Butter	15 g	1 lb ≈ $4.50	$0.15
Baking soda	3 g	16 oz ≈ $1.25	$0.01
Vanilla extract	1 tsp	2 oz ≈ $6.00–$7.50	$0.50–$0.63
TOTAL			≈ $3.00–$3.15

So let’s call it about $3.10 per batch, or about $2.77 per pound. Elder G estimates that if we buy larger quantities of ingredients, we could get that down to $1.60 per pound. AND, if we get into the pallet / rail car quantities, we could get that down to $1.00–$1.25/lb

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Here’s some of our competition:

Peanut brittle	Package price	Approx. $/lb
Homemade microwave recipe	~$3.10 / 1.12 lb	~$2.77
FirstChoiceCandy bulk, 10 lb	$48.99	$4.90
Sam’s Brittle-Brittle, 36 oz	$12.98	$5.77
Idaho Candy Co., 14 oz	$6.98	$7.98
Collin Street Bakery, 14 oz	$9.96	$11.38
SweetGourmet, 1 lb	$11.39	$11.39
It’s Delish, 1 lb	$14.99	$14.99
Snooks handmade, 1 lb	$18.75	$18.75
Granny’s handmade, 1 lb	$20.79	$20.79

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Sugar Science

Sugar discovered floating in deep space for the first time

Similarly sweet molecules may have jumpstarted life on Earth over 4 billion years ago.

by Andrew Paul / Published Jul 13, 2026 11:00 AM EDT

For the first time, astrobiologists have positively identified something sweet in outer space. According to a study published today in the journal Nature Astronomy, a team successfully pinpointed a type of sugar called erythrulose inside a molecular cloud near the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Here on Earth, the four-carbon compound is most often found in sunless tanning creams and raspberries.

Life as we know it is built on sugars. The biomolecules are both integral to metabolic processes, while also serving as foundations for both DNA and RNA. But despite their importance, evolutionary biologists still aren’t quite sure how the first sugars on Earth developed.
…
[There] is so much erythrulose inside G+0.693−0.027 that scientists calculated anywhere between 0.5 and 55 million tons of the sugar may have landed on Earth 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago, during a formative cosmic era known as the Late Heavy Bombardment.

Popular Science

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Back on Earth

Our first attempt at making peanut brittle in the WLBOTT Food Science Labs did not go so well. We did not get the sugar/corn syrup mixture hot enough, and we ended up with taffy.

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Some Spicy Ideas

Suja Muralidhar has a recipe for a mildly spicy jalapeno peanut brittle. Originally we thought of using pickled peppers, but (again standing on the shoulders of giants) we were advised that there would be too much moister from the peppers and vinegar.

From Suja (Pepper Bowl . com):

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WLBOTT Brittle Marketing

Baba Yaga, on retainer to WLBOTT, put her iron teeth front-and-center for our Brittle campaign.

And our more traditional approach:

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Open Casting for Brittle Spokesperson

Because too much is never enough.

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Not Our Best Sellers

WLBOTT Experimental Foods: “Edible until proven otherwise.”

Another under-performer…. Even with celebrity endorsements, turnip brittle never caught on.

The high-end Okra Brittle – another disappointment. Our food scientists couldn’t get past the slime factor.

But within a certain demographic, Sardine & Saltine Brittle proved to be a hearty mid-afternoon snack.

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References

More Sugar Science

The sugar / corn syrup / thermal process takes us to the frontiers of physics. The very edge of the frontier. Past the boarder wall and the sleeping corpulent ICE agents. Nobel Prize level of physics. Luckily Elder G breaks it down for us.

1. We begin with ordinary crystalline sugar

Your 200 g of table sugar is almost entirely sucrose, a molecule made from glucose and fructose joined together.

At room temperature, sucrose molecules arrange themselves into extremely orderly crystals. That’s why granulated sugar consists of all those hard little grains.

But brittle requires us to destroy that orderly society.

Enter the corn syrup.

2. Corn syrup is the anti-crystal agent

Your recipe combines:

200 g sucrose + 160 g corn syrup.

Light corn syrup contains mostly glucose and other carbohydrates, along with water. As the mixture heats, the sugar dissolves into the available water.

Here’s the clever bit: sucrose molecules would ordinarily love to reorganize themselves into crystals as the syrup cools. But all those differently shaped glucose molecules from the corn syrup get in the way.

Imagine trying to build a perfectly regular brick wall while someone keeps tossing potatoes into your brick pile.

That’s essentially what corn syrup does.

It is an interfering agent, suppressing sucrose crystallization and helping produce smooth, transparent brittle rather than a grainy mass.

3. The microwave boils away water

This is one reason microwave brittle works so beautifully.

Microwave energy strongly heats the water-containing syrup. The water boils, producing those furious bubbles you see during cooking.

As water escapes:

water ↓ → sugar concentration ↑ → boiling temperature ↑

That’s crucial. A sugar solution’s boiling temperature depends upon its concentration. Early in cooking, when there’s plenty of water, the mixture boils not far above 212°F/100°C.

But as water disappears, the boiling point climbs.

Eventually you’re approaching roughly 300°F/149°C, the traditional candy-making hard-crack stage.

And now things become chemically interesting.

4. The sugar begins caramelizing

At sufficiently high temperatures, sugar molecules themselves begin undergoing chemical reactions.

Sucrose breaks down and forms a large collection of new compounds. There isn’t one simple reaction called “caramelization.” It’s a complicated network involving dehydration, fragmentation, rearrangement and polymerization.

Some products are small volatile molecules that contribute buttery, fruity, nutty and toasted aromas. Others become larger molecules responsible for caramel’s golden-brown color.

So:
sucrose → heat → dozens/hundreds of reaction products → caramel flavor + aroma + color

This is why cooked sugar doesn’t merely taste like sweeter sugar. It’s chemically different stuff.

And importantly, caramelization isn’t the same thing as the Maillard reaction. Maillard browning primarily involves reducing sugars reacting with amino compounds. Your peanuts can participate in Maillard chemistry, but the transformation of the hot sugar syrup itself is dominated by sugar chemistry and caramelization.

5. Then you add baking soda, and the candy briefly loses its composure

This may be my favorite part of your recipe: Your ¾ teaspoon of baking soda is sodium bicarbonate, NaHCO₃.

When it encounters the extremely hot candy mixture, it decomposes and participates in acid-base reactions that release carbon dioxide gas.

Suddenly: hot syrup + NaHCO₃ → lots of tiny CO₂ bubbles

The candy foams dramatically.

Those bubbles become trapped when you spread and cool the brittle. Instead of producing a completely solid slab of sugar glass, you’ve created a microscopic network of air pockets.

That’s why baking soda makes brittle lighter, more porous, and easier to bite. Without it, you could make something closer to peanut-studded sugar plate glass.

Your dentist has just sent the baking-soda industry a thank-you card.

6. Now comes the really beautiful transformation: sugar glass

Once you’ve spread the hot brittle onto the pan, its temperature falls rapidly. The sugar molecules would like to organize themselves back into crystals.

But they can’t.

There are glucose and other syrup carbohydrates interfering with them. There are peanuts everywhere. There are fat molecules from the butter. There are microscopic bubbles. And cooling is happening quickly.

The molecules essentially get caught before they can establish an orderly crystal lattice.

The result is an amorphous solid.

Or, wonderfully: a glass.

Peanut brittle is basically an edible sugar glass containing peanuts and tiny gas bubbles. Window glass is also an amorphous solid. The chemistry is obviously quite different, but the physical concept is remarkably similar: molecules become locked into a disordered solid structure rather than forming an orderly crystal.

That explains the defining property of brittle.

When you bend it, it doesn’t deform much.

SNAP. A crack propagates through the glassy sugar matrix and the candy fractures.

And humidity is the villain

Leave good brittle exposed on an Austin summer day and another piece of chemistry starts working against you. Sugar is hygroscopic, meaning it attracts water from the surrounding environment. As the candy absorbs moisture, that water acts as a plasticizer within the sugar glass.

Its glass-transition temperature falls.

Instead of a rigid, glassy material at room temperature, the sugar becomes increasingly soft and mobile. Thus the tragic progression:

crisp brittle → slightly sticky brittle → chewy brittle → WLBOTT Peanut Adhesive™

That’s why an airtight container isn’t merely about keeping the candy “fresh.” You’re protecting the physical state of the sugar glass from atmospheric water.

Which, frankly, is a much more satisfying fate for an amorphous solid than becoming a bathroom window.

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Corn Syrup

Corn syrup has been around a surprising long time, and there is an interesting process to obtain it. Note: it is nothing like tapping maple trees.

Corn syrup is a food syrup that is made from the starch of corn/maize and contains varying amounts of sugars: glucose, maltose and higher oligosaccharides, depending on the grade. Corn syrup is used in foods to soften texture, add volume, prevent crystallization of sugar, and enhance flavor. Most table syrups typically consist primarily of corn syrup.

Corn syrup was available at grocery stores in the 19th century, as a generic product sold from a barrel. In 1902, the Corn Products Refining Company introduced clear, bottled corn syrup under the brand name of Karo Syrup. In 1910, the company launched one of the largest advertising campaigns ever seen. This included full-page advertisements in women’s magazines and free cookbooks full of recipes that called for Karo brand corn syrup. In the 1930s, they promoted a new pecan pie recipe that featured corn syrup.

Historically, corn syrup was produced by combining corn starch with dilute hydrochloric acid, and then heating the mixture under pressure. The process was invented by the German chemist Gottlieb Kirchhoff in 1811. Currently, corn syrup is obtained through a multi-step bioprocess. First, the enzyme α-amylase is added to a mixture of corn starch and water. α-amylase is secreted by various species of the bacterium genus Bacillus and is isolated from the liquid in which the bacteria were grown. The enzyme breaks down the starch into oligosaccharides, which are then broken into glucose molecules by adding the enzyme glucoamylase, known also as “γ-amylase”. Glucoamylase is secreted by various species of the fungus Aspergillus; the enzyme is isolated from the liquid in which the fungus is grown. The glucose can then be transformed into fructose by passing the glucose through a column that is loaded with the enzyme D-xylose isomerase, an enzyme that is isolated from the growth medium of any of several bacteria.

Corn syrup is produced from number 2 yellow dent corn. When wet milled, about 2.3 litres of corn are required to yield an average of 947 g of starch, to produce 1 kg of glucose syrup. A bushel (25 kg) of corn will yield an average of 31.5 pounds (14.3 kg) of starch, which in turn will yield about 33.3 pounds (15.1 kg) of syrup.

A curated collection of Karo Syrup ads from the early 20th century:

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Astrobiology Update

Although sugar has been detected in space, but no confirmed interstellar peanuts yet.

Elder G was a bit pedantic, a bit didactic, and a bit tongue-in-cheek (which is just the right blend):

A peanut is vastly too complicated to form in a molecular cloud. It’s the product of a living plant, containing proteins, fats, carbohydrates, DNA, cellular structures and thousands upon thousands of different compounds. Nobody has found anything remotely resembling a peanut floating between the stars.

But molecular clouds contain some of the chemical ingredients from which biology can eventually build peanut-like things. More than 300 molecular species have been identified in interstellar environments, including alcohols, aldehydes, acids, amines and other organic compounds. Researchers have even detected several chemical precursors relevant to amino acids and nucleobases.