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Dessert

Creamed Walnuts

Creamed walnuts are walnut balls made with egg white, sugar, and lemon or vanilla, rolled in walnut halves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Creamed Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Beat the egg white and cold water in a bowl until thoroughly mixed, then add the lemon or vanilla extract and mix well.

  2. Gradually beat in the confectioner's sugar until the mixture is stiff enough to mold.

Shape and finish

  1. Break off pieces the size of a nutmeg and roll them into smooth, round balls.

  2. Press halved walnut meats on each side of the balls, allowing the cream to show slightly between the nuts.

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. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  2. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Confectioner's sugar
Provides the sweetness and, as it is beaten in, stiffens the mixture so it holds its shape.
Egg white
Binds the mixture and adds structure to the soft cream.
Halved walnut meats
Add a nutty flavor and crunch on the outside of each ball.

The step that matters

Beating in the confectioner's sugar. Sugar must be added gradually so the mixture thickens evenly without becoming lumpy or too stiff. The cream needs to be firm enough to mold, but not so dry that it cracks when rolled.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, walnut, meat. 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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