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Dessert

Walnut Cakes

A simple walnut cake made with eggs, brown sugar, molasses, walnuts, salt, spice or ginger, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and ginger work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 737 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Walnut Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the beaten eggs, brown sugar, molasses, chopped walnuts, salt, and spice or ginger.

  2. Gradually add the flour and mix until well combined.

Bake

  1. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto buttered baking pans.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until golden.

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 + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown and develop a deeper flavor.
Walnuts
Add texture and a nutty flavor throughout the cakes.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep flavor, and extra browning to the cakes.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. Baking at 400°F browns the sugars and sets the flour and eggs quickly, so small drops can darken fast. Watch for golden color rather than relying only on time, since overbaking dries the cakes out.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, molasses, ginger, flour. 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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