Cooking For Engineers

[KC]

I live in Tajikistan (yes, I'm an engineer who loves to cook). Anyone know a peanut brittle recipe that doesn't use corn syrup (not available here.) Or anyone have a substitution?

[scott123]

Can you get your hands on:

Golden syrup (Lyles is one brand)?
Glucose syrup?
Rice syrup?
Glucose/Dextrose?
Malted Barley

The golden syrup, glucose syrup or rice syrup would probably be a 1:1 sub, but everything else might require a little experimentation.

Another avenue you could try would be inverting some sugar by heating a sugar solution with an acid. I would give cream of tartar a shot.

Lastly, there's honey. An extremely mild flavored honey might be an effective crystallization inhibitor (that's what the corn syrup is bringing to the table).

[kim]

can you just substitute sugar? i never use any variation of corn syrup in my recipes. i always substitute with sugar or honey and it seems to come out fine to me. i'm not sure what peanut brittle is though. please educate me.

[andreea360]

Don't reduce sugar when making candy OR turbinado sugar (Substitute one cup turbinado sugar for each cup granulated sugar.)

[kgb1001001]

The reason you use corn sugar when making peanut brittle (which to those not from the US is a form of toffee with nuts) is to keep the sugar syrup from crystallizing completely or prematurely. The glucose in the corn syrup interferes with the crystallization of the sucrose in the table sugar. Alton Brown has covered this in his Good Eats episode Fudge Factor, and you can read the transcript of that on the Good Eats Fan Page.

There's probably a lot more chemistry to this I could quote from Harold McGee or Shirley Corriher, but both of those books are upstairs right now..

[Wens]

[kgb1001001]

[Guest]

Corn syrup is almost pure glucose. In the US, if the doctors need to give you energy and they can't feed you, they may give you a glucose drip. These are essentially corn syrup so if you are allergic to corn you need to tell them this before you drop into the coma. Glucose is not very sweet. Glucose is burned by every cell in your body and is very filling as it immediately raises your blood sugar. When you eat starch, an enzyme in your saliva converts it to glucose. The same enzyme is used to make corn syrup from corn starch. Corn starch is (more or less) the part of the corn seed that is not oil, not the hull, and is not protein. It's usually obtained by dry milling. Corn syrup manufacturing must date to around the 1930s. It was considered a sweetener to replace the far more expensive (at the time) sugar (also called sucrose or cane sugar).

High Fructose Corn Syrup is corn syrup where about half of the glucose has been converted to fructose. Fructose is extremely sweet. HFCS was invented maybe around the 1960s and was intended to make a cheap substitute for table sugar (which is sucrose). The US maintains high sugar prices by import restrictions (to protect US sugar makers), so in the US, sugar is replaced by HFCS. In other countries they will use regular sugar. Hence you can buy Coke sweetened with cane sugar in Mexico.

In the US, both Corn Syrup and HFCS are sold in grocery stores. They will likely be hard to find in other places. To get the taste of HFCS, use cane sugar, but the chemistry is slightly different; cane sugar (sucrose) is exactly 50% fructose and 50% glucose. HFCS can be similar but in sucrose the glucose and fructose are combined into a double-sized molecule that crystallizes into the familiar sugar crystals. HFCS won't crystallize that way because the glucose and fructose has been split. You can split sucrose into glucose and fructose (in solution) by adding an acid. This happens naturally when you eat sucrose due to stomach acids. Then your body absorbs the glucose and fructose. Fructose is mostly processed by your liver into other sugars eventually. Some research says it's worse for you than the glucose.

In other parts of the world you can get the equivalent of corn syrup in most grocery stores, I would think. Look for another starch. Corn is very cheap in the US. In Australia they would sell you "wheat syrup" and in Japan it would be "Rice syrup". In the US, you can also buy (very cheaply) "corn sugar" which is basically glucose crystals. Adding small amounts of water to corn sugar will make your own corn syrup. I've seen 5 pound (2kg) bags of corn sugar sold at a beer supply store.

The reason for replacing some of the sugar in peanut brittle with corn syrup is for the following reasons, I think. First, you reduce some of the excessive sweetness and make the candy more filling. Second, corn syrup is cheaper than sugar in the US. Third, having different crystal types reduces crystallization rates. That is, the sugar is sucrose while the corn syrup is glucose and they don't crystallize well together.

You can replace corn syrup with HFCS in your recipe. Crystallization will still be suppressed because now there will be three molecules in solution, sucrose, glucose and fructose. Your candy will be sweeter and less filling.

Another possibility is to add enough acid to the sugar. The effect of acid is to split sucrose into glucose and fructose and you will then have those three molecules present and crystallization will be suppressed. And again, your candy will be sweeter and less filling.

[justinjcruz]

You can replace 1 cup of light corn syrup with 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar dissolved in 1/4 cup hot water or other liquid used in the recipe. For 1 cup of dark corn syrup, you can use the following substitutions: 3/4 cup light corn syrup plus 1/4 molasses. 1 cup honey.