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Dessert

Walnut Creams

A confection of walnut-sized French cream balls coated with walnut halves and optional candy coating.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Walnut Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Shape the cream

  1. Take a piece of French Cream the size of a walnut.

  2. Crack the English walnuts carefully and place half of each nut on each side of the cream ball, pressing them in.

  3. Alternatively, heat French Cream in a cup set in boiling water until it thickens.

Dip and finish

  1. Dip walnut meats into the heated cream one at a time using a fork.

  2. Place dipped walnuts on buttered paper and continue until all are used.

  3. Give them a second coat of candy if desired.

  4. Optionally, color with pink food coloring and flavor with vanilla.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Walnut + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Cream and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,301 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

French cream
Forms the sweet candy coating that holds the walnut halves together.
English walnuts
Provide the crunchy texture and nutty flavor that contrast with the sweet coating.
Vanilla extract
Adds a warm aroma to the sweet coating.
Butter
Greases the paper so the finished walnut creams do not stick to it.

The step that matters

Heating the French Cream. Heat it in a cup set in boiling water only until it thickens. Candy that is overheated can turn grainy or hard, while cream that is too cool stays runny and will not coat the walnut well.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, vanilla. 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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