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Dessert

Black Walnut Candy

A hard candy made with sugar, molasses, butter, walnuts, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Black Walnut Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a large pot, combine sugar, water, cream of tartar (or glucose), and molasses.

  2. Cook the mixture until it reaches a hard crack stage.

  3. Add butter and stir until the mixture reaches hard crack again.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in baking soda.

Add walnuts and shape

  1. Pour the mixture onto a greased slab and scatter walnuts over it.

  2. Fold the mixture to incorporate the walnuts and knead them through.

  3. When cool enough, shape into a small square.

  4. While one person shapes it, another should cut it into slices.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the bulk of the candy and sets into a brittle, hard structure as the syrup cooks.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps prevent sugar from crystallizing, keeping the candy smooth.
Molasses
Adds dark color, deep flavor, and moisture to the candy.
Sweet butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the texture of the candy.
Walnuts
Provide crunch and nutty flavor throughout the candy.
Baking soda
Reacts with the hot syrup to lighten its texture and make it more brittle.

The step that matters

Cooking the syrup to hard crack. Sugar syrup must reach the hard crack stage to set firm and brittle once cooled. Undercooking leaves the candy sticky, while overcooking can make it burnt and bitter.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, molasses, butter. 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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