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Dessert

Caramel Walnuts

Walnuts coated in a caramel syrup and set with almond-icing sugar balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 993 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Caramel Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts and almonds

  1. Break the walnuts and remove the inner husk.

  2. Blanch the almonds, remove the skins, and pound them finely.

Make the almond paste

  1. Add the icing sugar to the almonds and mix with the egg white until barely moistened.

  2. Roll the mixture into balls, placing half a walnut on each side, and set aside to harden for a day.

Make the caramel and finish

  1. In a saucepan, combine common sugar, water, and cream of tartar; boil until thick.

  2. Dip each walnut in the syrup and place on a buttered plate to cool.

  3. Heat the plate slightly to easily remove the walnuts.

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 + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Walnuts
Form the core and main body of each sweet, giving the bite and flavour.
Almonds
Provide the bulk of the paste, adding texture and a mild nutty flavour.
Icing sugar
Sweetens the almond paste and helps it hold together as a soft dough.
Egg white
Binds the ground almonds and sugar into a workable mixture.
Common sugar
Forms the syrup that coats each piece and sets into a crisp, glossy shell as it cools.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the syrup, helping prevent crystallisation so the coating stays smooth.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup until thick. If the sugar syrup is undercooked, the coating stays sticky; if overcooked, it turns brittle or darkens. Cream of tartar helps stop the sugar from crystallising into grainy lumps during boiling.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Brazil nutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, almond, sugar, cream. 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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