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Dessert

Walnut Cookies

Walnut cookies are sweet baked treats made with butter, eggs, sugar, spices, walnuts, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Walnut Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the eggs, brandy, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and baking powder; mix well.

  4. Stir in the chopped walnuts.

  5. Gradually add flour until the dough is firm enough to roll.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Place on a baking sheet and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.

  3. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly golden.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Allspice + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creaming with sugar traps air for a tender texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the cookies rise and become lighter.
Flour
Provides the structure that lets the dough be rolled and hold its cut shapes.
Walnuts
Add nutty flavor and a bit of texture throughout the cookies.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the dough is firm enough to roll. Adding too much flour at once or too little leaves the dough either crumbly or sticky. Flour is added gradually so the dough reaches a workable firmness without becoming tough, since extra flour makes baked cookies drier and denser.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, sugar, cinnamon, brandy, clove, allspice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar, cinnamon, brandy, clove, allspice. 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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