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Dessert

Cream Nougat

A nougat dessert made from sugar, glucose, egg whites, walnuts, blanched almonds, and vanilla flavor.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 993 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Cream Nougat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrups

  1. Cook sugar, water, and glucose to 250°F (120°C) for a medium hard ball.

  2. Cook 2½ pounds sugar, water, and 2 pounds glucose to 260°F (130°C) or to a crack.

Make the nougat

  1. Beat egg whites until stiff.

  2. Pour cooked mixture into egg whites in a small stream while stirring continuously.

  3. Pour this into the egg mixture and stir for about 10 minutes.

  4. Add walnuts, blanched almonds, and vanilla flavor.

  5. Let stand for 10 minutes.

  6. Mix nuts well before pouring into a lined box or deep pan.

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. Walnut + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Walnut + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 whites
Whipped to a stiff foam that traps air, giving the nougat its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Forms the cooked syrup that sets firm as it cools, giving the nougat its body and sweetness.
Glucose
Keeps the sugar syrup from crystallising, so the nougat stays smooth and chewy.
Walnuts
Add texture and crunch through the chewy nougat.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup into the egg whites. The syrup must be poured in a thin, steady stream while stirring, so it blends evenly without deflating the whipped whites or cooking the egg unevenly. Hot syrup added too quickly can scramble the egg and collapse the foam.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Hazelnutfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, almond, vanilla. 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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