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Dessert

Filling for Walnut Cake

A creamy walnut filling made with walnut meat, sweet cream, sugar, and corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 349 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Filling for Walnut Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine walnut meats, sweet cream, and sugar.

  2. Stir in corn starch.

  3. Cook over medium heat until thickened.

  4. Remove from heat and add walnut meats.

Cool and use

  1. Let cool before using as filling.

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 + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together349 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Meat + corntop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together414 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + creamtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnut meats
Adds nutty flavour and a chopped texture to the filling.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the filling a rich, smooth body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the nuttiness of the walnuts.
Corn starch
Thickens the filling as it heats, so it sets rather than staying runny.

The step that matters

Cook until thickened. Cornstarch only thickens once the mixture is hot enough for its granules to swell and set. If it is undercooked, the filling stays thin and can run out of the cake. Cook until it has visibly thickened before removing it from the heat.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Peanutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, cream, sugar, corn. 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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