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Dessert

Walnut Cookies

A simple cookie made with pounded walnuts, sugar, egg, milk, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Walnut Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the pounded walnut meats and fine sugar.

  2. Add the well beaten egg and milk, mixing until smooth.

  3. Gradually add flour until the dough is thin enough to roll.

  4. Stir in the baking powder.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Place on a baking sheet and bake until golden.

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. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Walnut meats
Provide the main body, nutty flavor and fat that give the cookies their character.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and adds structure as the cookies set.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to lighten the dough and help it rise.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown as they bake.
Flour
Gives the dough enough body to roll thin and hold its cut shapes.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the dough is thin enough to roll. Adding flour in small amounts lets you stop once the dough is rollable. Too much flour makes the cookies dry and tough, while too little leaves the dough sticky and hard to shape.

Swap the walnut

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

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

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