Skip to main content
Dessert

Black Walnut Brittle

A sweet brittle made with glucose, sugar, water, black walnut pieces, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Walnut and meat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,035 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Black Walnut Brittle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a kettle, combine glucose, sugar, and water.

  2. Heat the mixture, stirring until dissolved.

  3. Cook until the temperature reaches 260°F (127°C).

Add the walnuts and cook

  1. Add black walnut meats and salt, then cook until it reaches 290°F (143°C).

Spread and break

  1. Pour the mixture onto a greased slab and spread it thin with a palette knife.

  2. Wearing gloves, turn the batch upside down and stretch it thin.

  3. Once cooled, break into pieces.

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 + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Sugar + walnuttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,147 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + meattop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,866 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

Glucose
Keeps the sugar from recrystallizing, so the brittle stays smooth and crisp rather than grainy.
Sugar
Provides the sweetness and forms the hard, glassy structure of the brittle as it cooks.
Black walnut meats
Add nutty flavor and crunchy texture throughout the brittle.

The step that matters

Cooking to 290°F (143°C) after adding the walnuts. Sugar syrup must reach the hard-crack range to set crisp when cooled. Stopping early leaves the brittle soft or sticky, while overcooking can scorch the sugar and give a bitter taste.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, meat. 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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes