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Dessert

Nut Caramels

A chewy candy made from sugar, butter, milk, vanilla, and chopped nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and walnut 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 ↓

Nut Caramels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the nuts into small pieces.

Make the caramel

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, butter, milk, and vanilla extract.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until the mixture reaches a soft ball stage.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the chopped nuts.

Set and cut

  1. Pour the mixture onto a greased slab and let it cool before cutting into pieces.

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. Almond + walnuttop 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Nuts + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Nuts + filberttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together38 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the caramel base and provides sweetness as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the caramel a soft, smooth texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and milk solids that give the caramel a creamy flavour and softness.
Nuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavour to the soft caramel.

The step that matters

Cooking to the soft ball stage. Stirring constantly over medium heat keeps the sugar from scorching on the pan bottom. Stopping at the soft ball stage, where the sugar concentration and temperature are right, determines whether the caramel sets soft and chewy rather than hard or grainy.

Swap the filbert

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (nuts, almond, walnut, sugar, butter, milk, vanilla):

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Brazil nutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Filbertthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nuts, almond, walnut, sugar, butter, milk, 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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