Why it works: Syrup and walnut work together. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 350 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Toffee, Walnut
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Blanch the walnuts, then break them into small pieces or chop them coarsely.
Dissolve the carbonate of soda in a small quantity of hot water.
Make the toffee
Bring the golden syrup slowly to a boil, then add the glucose.
Boil until it reaches the 'little crack' stage.
Remove from heat, stir in the prepared walnuts and dissolved carbonate of soda.
Pour the mixture onto an oiled or buttered tin.
Set and wrap
Once set, mark into sections, and when completely cold, divide and wrap each piece in wax paper.
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.
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Syrup + walnuttop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together350 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Golden syrup
- Provides the sugar base that sets into a brittle, sweet toffee.
- Walnuts
- Add crunch and a nutty flavour that contrasts with the brittle toffee.
- Glucose
- Inhibits sugar crystallisation, keeping the toffee smooth rather than grainy.
- Carbonate of soda
- Reacts with the hot syrup to lighten the toffee and make it less dense.
The step that matters
Boil until the 'little crack' stage. Sugar syrup hardens as its temperature rises and water boils off. Stopping too early leaves a soft, sticky toffee, while cooking too long makes it bitter and hard to cut.
“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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