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Dessert

Glace Nuts

A confection of nuts, dates, figs, candied fruit, Malaga grapes, and marshmallows coated in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Dates and fig work together. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 318 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Glace Nuts

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 295°F (145°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, glucose, and enough water to dissolve the sugar.

  2. Stir until boiling, wash down the sides, cover, and steam.

  3. Remove the cover and cook until the syrup just starts to turn straw color.

  4. Alternatively, use a thermometer to cook to 295°F (145°C).

  5. Gently stir in a few drops of lemon extract into the syrup.

Dip and harden

  1. Prepare a double boiler or a bowl in a pan of boiling water to keep warm.

  2. Pour the syrup into the double boiler and set it on the table.

  3. Dip your nuts, dates, figs, and candied fruit into the syrup carefully.

  4. Quickly lift them out and place them on a piece of tin or the bottom of a tin pan to harden.

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. Dates + figtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Fig + grapetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together323 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Dates + grapetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together108 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Nuts + figtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together154 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar
Forms the syrup that coats the pieces and hardens into a brittle, glassy shell.
Glucose
Interferes with sugar crystallisation, keeping the syrup smooth and less likely to grain.
Nuts
Provide the main body of each piece, which the hardened syrup coats.

The step that matters

Cooking the syrup to the right stage. Syrup that is undercooked stays sticky and will not harden, while overcooked syrup turns bitter and dark. Cooking to straw colour or 295°F (145°C) gives a brittle coating.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, dates, fig, grape):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, dates, fig, grape. 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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