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Dessert

Candied Nuts

A mixture of sugar, water, vanilla, nuts, butter, cream, and cinnamon cooked into a sweet coating.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,287 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Candied Nuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine 1 cup sugar and ½ cup water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil until the syrup thickens, just past the threading point.

  3. Add a few drops of vanilla.

  4. Stir in 1 cup walnut meats until they are coated in sugar.

Make the pralines

  1. For pralines, mix 1½ pints sugar, butter the size of a walnut, and ⅓ pint cream in a pot.

  2. Stir constantly while cooking until the mixture forms a soft ball in cold water.

  3. Once done, pour in ½ pound chopped pecans and a little cinnamon.

  4. Beat the mixture until nearly cool.

  5. Drop spoonfuls onto oiled paper.

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. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Walnut + pecanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Walnut + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pecans + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Dissolves into syrup and, when cooked further, sets into a crystalline candy coating.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the texture of the praline as it cools.
Walnut meats
Provide the nut body of the candy, which the cooked sugar coats and holds together.
Pecans
Provide the nut body of the praline mixture, adding crunch and toasted flavor.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture until nearly cool. Beating while the sugar cools encourages tiny crystals to form, giving a creamy, opaque texture. Beating too early or too late can leave the candy grainy or too hard to spoon.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vanilla, meat, butter, cream, pecans, cinnamon):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vanilla, meat, butter, cream, pecans, cinnamon. 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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