Name: Compote of Walnuts
Ingredients: nearly ripe walnuts; lemon juice; syrup flavored with white noyeau

Why it works: Walnut and lemon 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 ↓

Compote of Walnuts

Ingredients

nearly ripe walnuts
lemon juice
syrup flavored with white noyeau

Directions

Split the walnuts through their natural division.
Insert a knife to remove the kernels from the shell.
Remove the white pith from the kernels.
Soak the kernels in cold water with lemon juice to keep them white.
Drain the walnuts and place them in a serving dish.
Add syrup flavored with white noyeau before serving.

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.

Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,149 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,235 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Walnut + syruptop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together350 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).