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Almond Creams, Walnut Creams, Chocolate Creams

A confection of egg white, sugar, and flavorings formed into balls and coated with chocolate or nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 993 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Almond Creams, Walnut Creams, Chocolate Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fondant base

  1. Combine egg white and cold water in a bowl.

  2. Stir in confectioner's sugar and vanilla until smooth.

Shape the creams

  1. Mold the mixture into small balls.

  2. Drop the balls into melted chocolate.

  3. For walnut creams, mold larger balls and place an English walnut on each side.

  4. For almond creams, cover blanched almonds with the mixture.

  5. Form the almond mixture into balls.

  6. Roll the almond balls in granulated sugar.

Make the chocolate creams

  1. For chocolate creams, boil water and white sugar until thick.

  2. Melt the chocolate in a bowl over simmering water.

  3. Once the sugar mixture is ready, pour it onto a marble slab.

  4. Stir the sugar mixture until thick.

  5. Knead until stiff enough to form balls.

  6. Drop the balls into chocolate.

  7. Place the balls on buttered 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. Walnut + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Chocolate + almondtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,733 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg white
Whips into the base to give the fondant a smooth, light body.
Confectioner's sugar
Dissolves into the liquid to form a thick, sweet, moldable paste.
White sugar
Boiled with water to form a syrup that thickens into a firm, shapeable candy.
Blanched almonds
Act as the nut centre wrapped in the sweet fondant coating.
English walnuts
Act as the nut centre and decoration set into the larger fondant balls.
Melted chocolate
Forms a coating that sets firm around each sugar centre.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar and water until thick. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration before pouring. Under-boiled syrup stays too soft to knead, while over-boiled syrup turns hard and grainy as it cools.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Hazelnutfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, vanilla, chocolate, almond. 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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