Black Walnut Salt Water Taffy

Our best seller — and the one almost nobody else makes.

Most salt water taffy comes in the flavors you'd expect: strawberry, vanilla, chocolate, banana. Black walnut isn't one of them. We've been making it in southern Illinois since 1919, and it has outsold everything else in the box for as long as anyone here can remember.

What black walnut actually tastes like

It isn't the walnut you buy in a bag at the grocery store. That's English walnut — mild, a little sweet, easy to forget. Black walnut is the American one, and it's a different thing entirely: darker, earthier, almost smoky, with a bite that stays with you. Folded into taffy, it turns into a flavor people remember for thirty years and then come looking for.

Why almost nobody makes it

Black walnuts are stubborn. The hulls stain everything they touch and the shells are famously hard to crack, which makes the nut meat expensive and a nuisance to work with. Most candy makers took one look and went back to peanuts. We didn't, because our recipe hasn't changed since 1919 and this is what's in it.

The same taffy from the fair

If you've had Sutter's black walnut before, you almost certainly had it at a fair — handed to you in the same box we still use. It's the same recipe that sold over a million boxes at the 1939 New York World's Fair. You don't have to wait for fair season anymore.

Get a box of Black Walnut — 14 oz, shipped to your door

Prefer a little of everything? The mixed box includes black walnut alongside the rest of our flavors. More on where we came from over on our history page.