Name: Malted Walnuts
Ingredients: 1½ cups walnut meal; ½ cup malt extract; a pinch of salt

Why it works: Walnut and malt work together. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Malted Walnuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

1½ cups walnut meal
½ cup malt extract
a pinch of salt

Directions

The book says “a warm oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).
Mix walnut meal, malt extract, and salt until well combined.

Dry and grind

Spread the mixture in tins and dry in the warm oven.
Once completely dry, grind the mixture to a fine meal.

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.

Walnut + malttop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnut meal: Forms the bulk of the mixture, providing the nutty base that the dried mixture is ground from.
Malt extract: Adds sweetness and a malty aroma, and its sugars can brown lightly during drying.

“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.