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Dessert

Maple Walnuts

A maple sugar candy with walnut pieces formed into small balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and walnut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,832 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Maple Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine maple sugar, granulated sugar, and a little water.

  2. Boil until a spoonful of syrup dropped into cold water can form a ball, but is not brittle.

  3. Skim off any scum that rises during boiling.

  4. Before removing from heat, stir in the piece of butter.

Form and set the candies

  1. Take a few spoonfuls of syrup into a small bowl and stir rapidly until it grains.

  2. Form the syrup into small balls and press half a walnut meat into each side.

  3. Set the formed candies in a cool place to harden.

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. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + walnuttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,147 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Maple sugar
Provides the main sweetness and maple flavor of the candy.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the syrup crystallize into a firm candy.
Butter
Adds richness and softens the texture of the finished candy.
Shelled english walnuts
Adds crunch and a nutty flavor that contrasts with the sugar.

The step that matters

Stirring the syrup until it grains. Stirring a boiled sugar syrup as it cools creates many small sugar crystals, giving a creamy, opaque texture. Stirring too early or too late can leave the candy grainy in the wrong way or too hard to shape.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Filbertfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. 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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