Name: Compote of Green Walnuts
Ingredients: Green walnuts; Lemon juice; Syrup flavored with white noyau

Why it works: Walnut and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Compote of Green Walnuts

Ingredients

Green walnuts
Lemon juice
Syrup flavored with white noyau

Directions

Split the walnuts through their natural division with a knife.
Remove the inner part of the shell and the white pith.
Soak the walnuts in cold water with lemon juice.
Drain the walnuts and pile them in a serving dish.
Pour flavored syrup over the walnuts and serve.

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.

Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,149 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,235 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Walnut + syruptop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together350 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).