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Dessert

Black Walnut Brittle

A hard candy made from sugar, glucose, water, salt, and finely chopped black walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,147 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Black Walnut Brittle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 290°F (143°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Chop the black walnuts finely and set aside.

  2. In a large pot, combine sugar, glucose, water, and a little coarse sea salt.

Cook and set

  1. Cook the mixture to 290°F (143°C).

  2. Add the chopped walnuts and stir quickly.

  3. Remove from heat and pour onto a slab, spreading it as thin as possible.

  4. Turn the batch over and spread it out as thin as you can.

  5. Once cold, break into pieces for 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.

  1. Walnut + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,147 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the brittle's crisp, hard candy structure as it cooks to temperature.
Glucose
Helps prevent sugar from crystallising, keeping the brittle smooth and crisp.
Black walnuts
Provide the nutty flavour and crunchy texture throughout the brittle.

The step that matters

Cooking to 290°F (143°C). Sugar must reach this hard-crack stage to set crisp when cool. Undercooked mixtures stay sticky and soft, while overcooked sugar turns bitter and dark.

“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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