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Walkxjt Chocolate Drops

A sweet treat made by forming powdered sugar and water into balls, adding walnuts, and coating with melted chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and walnut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,548 recipes. Both carry 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine, which smells roasted, nutty. The science ↓

Walkxjt Chocolate Drops

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the fondant

  1. Boil the powdered sugar and cold water for 5 minutes.

  2. Place the mixture in a pan of cold water and beat until cool enough to form into balls.

  3. Place a walnut in the center of each ball.

Coat and finish

  1. Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a boiling kettle.

  2. Once the drops are cool, roll them in the melted chocolate using a fork.

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. Chocolate + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  2. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. 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

Powdered sugar
Dissolves into a boiled syrup that cools and sets into the soft, sweet candy base.
Cold water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be boiled into a smooth syrup.
Chocolate
Forms a thin, sweet coating that sets firm around each drop.
Walnuts
Sit at the center of each drop, adding crunch against the soft candy.

The step that matters

Beating the mixture until cool enough to form balls. Beating a boiled sugar syrup as it cools encourages fine crystals, giving a creamy, soft texture. If it is shaped too early it may be sticky, and if it is left too long it becomes hard and difficult to form.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Hazelnutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Peanutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, chocolate. 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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