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Dessert

Walnut Bar

A sweet walnut bar made by boiling sugar, glucose, and water, adding walnuts, baking soda, and setting the mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and walnut 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 ↓

Walnut Bar

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the candy

  1. Boil water, glucose, and sugar at 290°F (143°C).

  2. Add walnuts after boiling.

  3. While stirring with a paddle, sift baking soda through your left hand into the mixture with your right.

Set and cut

  1. Place the mixture in a frame and let it set until firm but not too cold.

  2. Cut into bars.

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. Sugar + walnuttop 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

Glucose
Interferes with sugar crystals forming, keeping the candy smooth and chewy rather than grainy.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, once cooked, the firm body that holds the bar together.
Baking soda
Releases gas when heated in the syrup, creating bubbles that lighten the texture.
English or black walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavor that contrasts with the sweet, chewy candy.

The step that matters

Sifting in the baking soda. Baking soda reacts with the hot sugar mixture and releases gas, so it foams up quickly. Stirring while you sift spreads the bubbles evenly, which gives an even, light texture instead of pockets of gas.

“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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