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Dessert

Nut Filling

Nut Filling is a mixture of milk, walnuts, eggs, and sugar cooked until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and walnut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,236 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Nut Filling

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler until it boils.

  2. Add the chopped walnuts, beaten eggs, and sugar.

  3. Stir well to combine and cook until thickened.

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. Milk + walnuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,037 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Eggs
Set and thicken the mixture as they cook, binding the filling together.
Walnuts
Provide the main body, texture and nutty flavour of the filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken into a smooth, pourable filling.

The step that matters

Cook until thickened. Eggs set as they are heated, so cooking gently in a double boiler and stopping once the mixture thickens prevents it from curdling or turning grainy.

Swap the walnut

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

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

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