Name: Marzipan Walnuts
Ingredients: Marzipan (from recipe Nos. 82 or 83); Dessert walnuts; White of egg; Finely minced pistachios or colored sugar

Why it works: Walnut and pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 195 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Marzipan Walnuts

Ingredients

Marzipan (from recipe Nos. 82 or 83)
Dessert walnuts
White of egg
Finely minced pistachios or colored sugar

Directions

Divide the marzipan into two or three portions.
Color and flavor each portion to taste.
Divide into pieces the size of a filbert.
Place each piece between two halves of a walnut and press together.
Brush each with white of egg.
Roll in finely minced pistachios or colored sugar.

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 + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together195 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Walnut + eggtop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + pistachiotop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together822 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).