Chocolate-Covered Peanuts Day

What the day is

Chocolate-Covered Peanuts Day is observed on February 25. The coating is made by a process called panning, which is worth knowing about because it explains why the sweets look the way they do.

Origin and background

Dipping works for a strawberry and not for a peanut. Thousands of small irregular centers cannot be handled individually, and a dipped nut would set with a foot of pooled chocolate where it touched the tray. Panning solves both problems by never letting the pieces stop moving.

The centers are tumbled in a large rotating drum while liquid chocolate is added a little at a time. Each addition spreads across every surface as the pieces roll over one another, and cool air is blown through so that layer sets before the next goes on. The shell is therefore built up in dozens of thin coats rather than applied once, which is why it is so even and why the pieces emerge separate rather than stuck together. The same machinery, with sugar syrup instead of chocolate, produces the hard shell on sugar-coated sweets, and a final polishing stage adds the gloss.

The process is old. Panning developed from the techniques used to make sugared almonds, which confectioners had been producing in rotating vessels for centuries before chocolate entered the picture.

The pairing itself is doing sound work. Peanuts are savory, salty and roasted, and chocolate is sweet and fatty, so each supplies what the other lacks, and the salt sharpens the perception of sweetness. The contrast in texture between a brittle shell and a dense nut matters as much as the flavors.

The usual storage warning applies: peanuts carry a lot of oil and turn rancid faster than the chocolate around them degrades.

How to take part

• Look at one closely and notice the shell has no seam or foot.
• Choose salted centers, which do considerably more for the chocolate.
• Buy quantities you will finish, since the nut spoils before the coating does.
• Try them alongside chocolate raisins to taste what the salt is contributing.
• Keep them cool and dry, away from anything strongly scented.