Skip to main content
Dessert

Creamed Walnuts

A sweet walnut treat made by whipping egg white, water, vanilla, and powdered sugar, then shaping and coating with walnut pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vanilla and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Creamed Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg white, cold water, and vanilla extract until well combined.

  2. Gradually stir in confectioners' sugar until the mixture is soft enough to mold.

Shape and finish

  1. Break off pieces of the mixture in your desired size and roll them in your palms until smooth.

  2. Place ½ walnut meat on each side of the rolled mixture, allowing the cream to show slightly between the nuts.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  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).

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

Confectioners' sugar
Sweetens and stiffens the cream so it holds a moldable shape.
Egg white
Adds structure and lightness to the cream as it is beaten.
Walnut meat
Provides crunch and nutty flavor that contrasts with the soft cream.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in confectioners' sugar. Adding the sugar slowly lets it dissolve and incorporate evenly. Adding it all at once can make the mixture grainy or too stiff, while too little leaves it too soft to mold.

Swap the walnut

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

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

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

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes