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Dessert

Walnut Squares

A baked walnut dessert with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, walnuts, nutmeg or vanilla, iced with boiled icing and lemon, topped walnut halves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,230 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Walnut Squares

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and milk, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the flour, baking powder, chopped walnuts, and nutmeg or vanilla.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased baking sheet and spread evenly.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake for about 25-30 minutes or until golden brown.

  2. Once cool, cut into cubes and ice on 5 sides with boiled icing flavored with lemon.

  3. Top each square with half a walnut meat.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and add richness and tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the batter as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the batter rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it brown as it bakes.
Chopped walnuts
Add crunch, nutty flavor and fat to the batter.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Milletfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, flour, nutmeg, lemon. 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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