Skip to main content
Dessert

Black Walnut Candy

A hard candy made from brown sugar, butter, walnuts, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and walnut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,832 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Black Walnut Candy

Ingredients

Directions

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

  2. Boil hard for 20 minutes.

  3. Add the butter.

  4. Boil for an additional 5 minutes.

  5. Stir in the walnut kernels.

  6. Bring to a boil.

  7. Remove from heat.

  8. Stir for 1 minute.

  9. Pour into buttered saucers.

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. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + walnuttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,147 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Provides the sweetness and the caramel flavor as it cooks down.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the candy a smoother, softer texture.
Walnut kernels
Add crunch and a nutty flavor to the finished candy.

The step that matters

Boil hard for 20 minutes. The sugar must reach the right concentration to set firm once cooled. Boiling too briefly leaves the candy soft and sticky, while boiling too long can make it hard or grainy.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Filbertfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. 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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes