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Dessert

Black Walnut Kisses

A sweet treat made by cooking cream of tartar, adding walnuts and vanilla flavor.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,730 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Black Walnut Kisses

Ingredients

Directions

Cook and cool

  1. Cook cream of tartar to 240°F (115°C).

  2. Pour the mixture onto a damp slab.

  3. Cover with a damp cloth and let it cool.

Add walnuts and shape

  1. Warm slightly in a steam bath.

  2. Add chopped black walnuts and vanilla flavor, then spoon out.

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 + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Cream + walnuttop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Cream and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,301 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cream of tartar
Acid that helps keep the sugar syrup smooth rather than grainy as it cooks and cools.
Black walnuts
Provide the main bulk, crunch and nutty flavor in the candy.
Vanilla flavor
Adds a sweet aroma that rounds out the nutty taste.

The step that matters

Cook cream of tartar to 240°F (115°C).. The final temperature sets how much water remains in the sugar mixture. Stopping short leaves the candy soft and sticky, while going too far makes it hard and brittle once it cools.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, vanilla. 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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