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Dessert

Stuffed Walnuts

A confection of almond paste stuffed with walnut halves, colored and dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Stuffed Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Strain the icing sugar through a fine sieve, then mix it with the ground almonds.

  2. Whip the egg white to a light froth.

  3. Add the egg white to the mixture along with lemon juice and vanilla until it forms a stiff paste.

  4. Knead the paste on a sugared board, adding more sugar if sticky.

  5. Divide the paste.

Shape and finish

  1. Color each portion as desired.

  2. Form the colored portions into round balls and flatten them.

  3. Press half a walnut onto each side of the flattened mixture.

  4. Lightly brush the filling with egg white.

  5. Dust with fine sugar.

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. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Walnut + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Ground almonds
Provide the bulk and nutty flavor of the paste.
Icing sugar
Adds sweetness and fine texture to the paste.
Egg white
Binds the paste together and gives it a light, stiff structure.
Dried walnuts
Provide the crunchy, visible filling pressed onto each side.

The step that matters

Add the egg white to the mixture until it forms a stiff paste. Too little or too much egg white changes the paste's consistency. Stiff enough to hold its shape is needed for forming and flattening, while a sticky paste is hard to handle and shape, which is why the sugared board and extra sugar help.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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