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Dessert

To Make Walnut Cream Candy or Dates

A confection of walnut kernels and dates coated in a sweet vanilla‑flavored egg‑white cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and dates work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 218 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

To Make Walnut Cream Candy or Dates

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg white and water.

  2. Add vanilla and salt, then stir in sugar until a cream forms that can hold a fork upright.

Assemble the candies

  1. Place a small amount of the cream on each side of the walnut kernel and press gently.

  2. Remove the stone from the dates and apply the cream in the same manner.

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. Vanilla + datestop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Walnut + datestop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together302 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Vanilla + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Vanilla and sugar 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

Egg white
Its proteins help bind the sugar and water into a thick, stable cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and thickens it as it dissolves into the egg white mixture.
Walnuts
Provide the main nutty flavour and crunch of the finished candy.
Dates
Add natural sweetness and a chewy texture beneath the cream.
Vanilla extract
Adds a warm aroma that rounds out the sweetness of the cream.

The step that matters

Stir the sugar until the cream holds a fork upright. Sugar dissolving into the egg white mixture thickens it. If the cream is too thin it will run off the walnuts and dates, and if it is overbeaten or too stiff it will not press onto the nut and fruit evenly.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vanilla, sugar, cream, dates. 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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