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Nut Filling for Layer Cake

A creamy walnut filling for layer cakes made with sour cream, sugar, walnuts, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Nut Filling for Layer Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Combine sour cream and white sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Cook slowly for 10 minutes.

  3. Add chopped walnuts and bring to a boil again.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg white, then beat for 1-2 minutes.

Cool and assemble

  1. Let the mixture cool in a cool place.

  2. Spread the filling between cake layers.

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 + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Cream + walnuttop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Walnut + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,037 recipes

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

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Sour cream
Provides moisture and a tangy, creamy body to the filling.
White sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it thicken as it cooks.
English walnuts
Add nutty flavor and a chopped texture to the filling.
Egg white
Beaten into the filling, it adds structure and lightness.

The step that matters

Remove from heat before stirring in the egg white. Adding the beaten egg white off the heat keeps it from scrambling in the hot mixture, while the residual heat still helps set the filling.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, egg. 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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