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Dessert

Walnut Molasses Bars

A sweet bar made with butter, lard, boiling water, brown sugar, molasses, baking soda, flour, spices, and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Walnut Molasses Bars

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Pour boiling water over butter and lard in a bowl.

  2. Add brown sugar, molasses mixed with baking soda, flour, salt, and spices.

  3. Chill the mixture thoroughly.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out to ¼ inch thick and cut into strips.

  2. Sprinkle with chopped walnut meats and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 10 minutes.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + walnuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the dough hold together when chilled.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the bars tender and short in texture.
Molasses
Adds dark color, deep sweetness, and moisture to the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lighten the texture and aid browning.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the bars together as they bake.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and contributes to browning.

The step that matters

Chill the mixture thoroughly. The dough is soft and sticky from the fat and molasses. Chilling firms the fat so the dough can be rolled and cut cleanly and holds its shape in the oven instead of spreading.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, molasses, flour, ginger, nutmeg, clove):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Chickpeafits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, molasses, flour, ginger, nutmeg, clove. 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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