Skip to main content
Dessert

Walnut Creams

A sweet made of icing sugar, ground almonds, and walnut halves, coated in a crystal sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Walnut Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fondant

  1. Sift the icing sugar through a sieve.

  2. Add the ground almonds and the beaten egg, then mix well.

  3. Divide the mixture into bowls.

  4. Add flavouring and colouring.

  5. Knead until smooth.

Shape and rest

  1. Roll into small balls.

  2. Press a half walnut on either side of each ball.

  3. Place on a buttered dish.

  4. Let sit for two hours.

Dip and finish

  1. Boil the crystal sugar, cream of tartar, and water for seven minutes.

  2. Remove from heat.

  3. Quickly drop the sweets into the syrup.

  4. Return them to the dish until dry.

  5. Trim the sweets.

  6. Place them in paper cases.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Icing sugar
Forms the sweet, fine-textured base of the fondant.
Egg
Binds the mixture and adds moisture and richness to the fondant.
Ground almonds
Adds body, nutty flavour and a tender texture to the fondant.
Crystal sugar
Forms the syrup that coats the sweets and sets into a glossy shell.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the syrup, helping prevent crystallisation for a smooth coating.

The step that matters

Quickly drop the sweets into the syrup. Once the syrup is boiled and removed from heat, it begins to cool and thicken. Dipping promptly keeps the coating thin and even, while delay can leave it thick, uneven or grainy as the sugar crystallises.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Pecansfits less well

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

You might also like

Almond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipesAlmond WafersAlmond Wafers22 recipesCoconut Almond CakeCoconut Almond Cake17 recipes