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Dessert

Creamed Walnuts

A sweet walnut cream molded into small shapes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and walnut 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 ↓

Creamed Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg white and cold water until thoroughly mixed.

  2. Add the lemon or vanilla extract and mix well.

  3. Gradually beat in the confectioner's sugar until the mixture is stiff enough to mold.

Shape and decorate

  1. Break off pieces the size of a nutmeg and roll them until smooth and round.

  2. Press halved walnut meats on each side of the cream, allowing the cream to show slightly between the meats.

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. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Confectioner's sugar
Provides sweetness and bulk, stiffening the mixture so it can be shaped.
Egg white
Adds structure and binds the mixture into a cohesive, moldable paste.
Halved walnut meats
Add nutty flavor and a decorative finish on the outside of each piece.

The step that matters

Gradually beat in the confectioner's sugar. Adding the sugar all at once can make the mixture lumpy and uneven, while adding it slowly lets it blend smoothly. Stop once it is stiff enough to mold, since over-stiffening makes the cream crumbly and hard to shape.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, walnut, meat. 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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