Skip to main content
Dessert

Walnut Fudge

A chocolate fudge with walnuts, made by boiling sugar, milk, butter, and chocolate, then adding walnuts and setting in tins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Walnut Fudge

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fudge

  1. Combine sugar, milk, butter, and grated chocolate in a skillet.

  2. Boil for about 10 minutes, testing in cold water for a soft ball stage.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in chopped walnuts to taste.

  4. Beat the mixture until thick.

Set and cut

  1. Pour the mixture into buttered tins about ½ inch deep.

  2. Cool the mixture.

  3. Cut into squares.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Chocolate + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

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

  5. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides sweetness and, when boiled, forms the firm crystalline body of the fudge.
Milk
Adds moisture and dissolves the sugar so the mixture can be boiled smoothly.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the fudge a smooth, tender texture.
Grated chocolate
Adds chocolate flavour and richness to the fudge.
Walnut meats
Add crunch and a nutty flavour that contrasts with the soft fudge.

The step that matters

Beating until thick. Beating after boiling cools the sugar syrup and encourages fine crystals to form, which gives fudge its smooth, creamy texture. Stopping too early or too late changes the set.

Swap the walnut

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

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

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

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate FudgeChocolate Fudge55 recipesChocolate Drop CookiesChocolate Drop Cookies50 recipes