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Dessert

Walnut Rock

A sweet walnut confection made by boiling milk, sugar, butter, and walnuts, then setting and cutting into bars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Walnut Rock

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Boil the milk until it reduces to one fourth of its original quantity.

  2. Add the sugar and butter to the milk.

  3. Blanch and dry the walnuts.

  4. Mix the walnuts with the other ingredients.

  5. Stir continuously while boiling until the mixture leaves the sides of the pan.

  6. Add a few drops of maraschino.

Set and cut

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-greased shallow tin.

  2. When it is half set, mark it into bars or squares using a buttered knife.

  3. Once completely cool, break it along the marked lines.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Walnut + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Reduced by boiling to concentrate it, forming the creamy base that thickens into the set mixture.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture firm up and set as it cools.
Fresh butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the mixture a smooth, tender texture.
Dried walnuts
Add nutty flavour and crunch to the set confection.

The step that matters

Stir continuously while boiling. Sugar and milk can scorch or stick to the bottom of the pan if left unattended. Constant stirring keeps the mixture even and cooking evenly until it thickens and pulls away from the sides.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Cocoafits better
  3. Pecansfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk. 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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