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Dessert

Cream Walnuts

A walnut confection made from an egg white and sugar paste flavored with orange rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and walnut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,058 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cream Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg white and water.

  2. Stir in enough sugar to form a paste.

  3. Knead the paste on a marble slab until smooth.

  4. Add the grated orange rind before the paste is too thick.

Shape and finish

  1. Take small pieces of the paste, roll them into balls, and flatten them.

  2. Press halves of English walnuts onto each side of the flattened balls.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Orange + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + walnuttop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + walnuttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg white
Binds the sugar into a cohesive paste that holds its shape.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, with the egg white, forms the body of the paste.
Orange rind
Adds aroma and citrus flavour to the paste.
English walnuts
Add crunch and nutty flavour on the outside of the balls.

The step that matters

Add the grated orange rind before the paste is too thick. Once a sugar paste stiffens, it resists kneading, so the rind will not distribute evenly. Adding it earlier lets the oils and zest mix through the paste while it is still workable.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, walnut):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, walnut. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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