Name: Nut Patties
Ingredients: 3 pounds mixed nuts (almonds, pecans, English walnuts, black walnuts, filberts); bon bon cream (for melting); food coloring (optional)

Why it works: Mixed nuts and almond share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Nut Patties

Ingredients

3 pounds mixed nuts (almonds, pecans, English walnuts, black walnuts, filberts)
bon bon cream (for melting)
food coloring (optional)

Directions

Prepare the nuts

Grind the mixed nuts and spread them thinly on a clean surface.
Press the nuts down smooth with a small board or pan.

Make and shape the patties

Dissolve the bon bon cream until melted; do not flavor, but add food coloring to your preference.
Drop the melted cream onto the nuts in small rounds, similar in size to other patties.

Finish

Once dry, turn the patties over and stack them in dishes with the nut side up.

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.

Mixed nuts + almondtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together42 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Almond + walnuttop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together993 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Mixed nuts + walnuttop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together36 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pecans + walnuttop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together634 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Mixed nuts + pecanstop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together18 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mixed nuts: Provide the main body, crunch and nutty flavor of each patty.
Bon bon cream: Melts to bind the nuts together and set into a firm, glossy coating as it dries.

Swap the filbert

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mixed nuts, almond, pecans, walnut, cream):

Brazil nutfits better
Pistachiofits better
Cashew nutfits better
Filbertthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mixed nuts, almond, pecans, walnut, cream. 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.