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Cream Cheese and Walnut

A toasted bread spread of butter, cream cheese, and finely chopped walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream Cheese and Walnut

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop walnuts finely and mix with cream cheese.

  2. Trim the hard crust off the bread.

Assemble and wrap

  1. Spread butter, cream cheese, and walnuts on the bread.

  2. Cut diagonally and wrap in wax paper.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,747 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Cream cheese + walnuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together439 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cream cheese + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together166 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream cheese
Provides a soft, creamy, tangy spread that holds the walnuts together.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a mild, toasty bitterness that contrasts with the soft cheese.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the bread and helps the filling stick.
Bread
Forms the base that carries the spread and gives the sandwich its structure.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream cheese, butter, bread. 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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