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Dessert

Maple Walnuts

A confection of walnut halves coated in maple syrup and filled with stiff powdered sugar frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and meat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,035 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Maple Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the frosting

  1. Beat the egg white to a stiff froth.

  2. Stir in enough powdered sugar to achieve a stiff frosting consistency.

Coat and finish

  1. Dip the walnut meats in a syrup made by boiling the maple syrup and water for 2-3 minutes.

  2. Press some of the frosting between two halves of the walnut and let it harden.

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

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

  2. Maple syrup + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Sugar + maple syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,252 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Egg + meattop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg white
Its whipped proteins trap air and form a stiff foam that gives the frosting its body.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the foam and thickens it into a stiff, spreadable frosting.
Maple syrup
Adds sweetness and maple flavor to the syrup that coats the walnuts.

The step that matters

Beat the egg white to a stiff froth. Egg white proteins unfold and trap air as they whip. If the foam is under-beaten, it cannot hold the powdered sugar, so the frosting stays runny and will not harden between the walnut halves.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, maple syrup, 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.

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