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English Walnut and Pecan-nut Candy

A candy made by boiling sugar to hard ball stage and pouring over halved walnuts and pecans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and pecans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 634 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

English Walnut and Pecan-nut Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Boil the sugar until it reaches the hard ball stage.

  2. Crack the walnuts and pecans.

Shape and set

  1. Place the halves on buttered baking sheets.

  2. Pour the hot boiled sugar over each nut half using a large teaspoon.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Pecans + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,416 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + pecanstop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,962 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Boiled to the hard ball stage, it forms a firm, brittle candy coating around the nuts.
Walnuts
Provide the nut halves that the sugar coats, adding crunch and a toasty flavour.
Pecans
Provide the nut halves that the sugar coats, adding crunch and a toasty flavour.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot boiled sugar over each nut half. Sugar cooked to the hard ball stage is very hot and thickens quickly as it cools. Pouring it promptly over each half, before it sets, keeps the coating even and prevents it hardening in the pan.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Brazil nutfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Filbertfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pecans, 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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