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Dessert

Grilled Nuts

A sweet treat made by coating walnuts with boiled sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Grilled Nuts

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine the sugar and boiling water.

  2. Boil the mixture until it forms threads when dripped from a spoon.

  3. Remove from heat and pour the syrup over the walnut meats.

  4. Stir until the mixture is cool.

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

Granulated sugar
Forms the syrup that coats the walnuts and turns sweet and crisp as it cools.
Walnut meats
Provide the nut base that the cooked syrup coats and sets around.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup to the thread stage. Sugar syrup sets firm as it cools only if it has boiled long enough to reach the right concentration. Too little boiling leaves a sticky coating, while too much can turn it hard or brittle.

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.

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