Name: Nuts in Syrup
Ingredients: unripe nuts; 1 ounce sodium sulfite per 3 gallons of water; 1 ounce sodium sulfite per 4 gallons of water; hot syrup at 18° Beaume with 1 ounce sodium sulfite per 6 gallons of syrup

Why it works: Nuts and syrup work together. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 168 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Nuts in Syrup

Ingredients

unripe nuts
1 ounce sodium sulfite per 3 gallons of water
1 ounce sodium sulfite per 4 gallons of water
hot syrup at 18° Beaume with 1 ounce sodium sulfite per 6 gallons of syrup

Directions

Prepare the nuts

Select unripe nuts with soft shells.
Peel the nuts with a knife, making flat peels.
Soak the nuts in cold water with 1 ounce of sodium sulfite per 3 gallons of water. Change the water several times until it becomes clearer.
Boil the nuts in water with 1 ounce of sodium sulfite per 4 gallons for 5 minutes. Drain the nuts.
Cover the nuts with fresh water containing the same amount of sulfite. Continue boiling and draining until the nuts are white.
If the nuts are too dark, finish blanching them in a strong cold solution of 1 ounce of sulfite per gallon.
Rinse the nuts several times in clear water.

Syrup and preserve

Place the nuts in stone jars. Pour hot syrup over the nuts. Let the nuts stand for 24 hours.
Drain the syrup and reboil it at 20° Beaume. Pour the reboiled syrup over the nuts.
Repeat this process every two days, increasing the syrup strength by 1° until it reaches 25°.
Can or bottle the nuts and cover them with hot sugar syrup at 20°. Seal and process quart cans for 9 minutes, pint cans for 5 minutes, quart jars for 4 minutes, pint jars for 2 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.

Nuts + syruptop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together168 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Unripe nuts: Soft shells and tender kernels take up syrup well, so they are the base of the preserve.
Sodium sulfite: Bleaches the nuts to a white colour and helps keep them pale during soaking and blanching.
Sugar syrup: Sweetens the nuts and, at a rising strength, draws moisture out and preserves them.

The step that matters

Raising the syrup strength gradually. Adding syrup in stages at 20° and then up to 25° Beaume, with rest periods between, lets sugar move gradually into the nuts. A sudden jump in concentration can toughen or shrink them and leave the centre unevenly sweetened.

“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.