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Dessert

Walnut Mocha

A moist cake flavored with coffee and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Coffee and walnut work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 289 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Walnut Mocha

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Gradually mix the butter with the sugar.

  2. Add the coffee infusion.

  3. Sift together the flour and baking powder.

  4. Add the sifted mixture to the batter.

  5. Fold in the walnut pieces.

  6. Gently incorporate the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a baking dish.

  2. Bake until done.

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. Coffee + walnuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together289 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb by coating the flour and sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while creating a tender texture.
Egg whites
Trap air when beaten, helping the cake rise and become light.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise in the oven.
Coffee infusion
Supplies the liquid and the coffee flavour that gives the cake its mocha taste.

The step that matters

Gently incorporate the beaten egg whites. Beaten egg whites hold trapped air that makes the cake light. Stirring them in vigorously knocks that air out, so the cake bakes up dense instead of airy.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, coffee, flour, meat, egg. 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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