Skip to main content
Dessert

Walnut Puffs

A baked confection of stiffened egg whites folded with sugar and walnuts, dropped onto paper and baked until dry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Walnut Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a warm oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites until very stiff.

  2. Fold in the sugar and walnut meats.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls onto buttered paper or tins.

  2. Place in a warm oven (400°F / 200°C) to dry.

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

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

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

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

  4. Egg + walnuttop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,037 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + walnuttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,147 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

Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that gives the puffs their light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the puffs and helps stabilize the whipped egg white foam.
Walnut meats
Add body, texture and nutty flavor to the puffs.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until very stiff.. Under-beaten whites collapse when the sugar and nuts are folded in, and the puffs spread flat and dense in the oven. Fully stiff whites hold air through the drying step.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes