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Pickled Buttermuts and Walnuts

Pickled nuts seasoned with spices and preserved in cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Buttermuts and Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the nuts

  1. When the outer shell can be pierced by a pin, scald the nuts and rub off the skin.

  2. Soak the nuts in a strong brine for six days, changing the water every other day and keeping them covered.

  3. Drain and wipe the nuts, piercing each one several times with a large needle.

Pack and pickle

  1. Pound the black pepper, ginger root, cloves, mace, and nutmeg to a powder and mix well with the mustard seed.

  2. Layer the nuts in jars, sprinkling the powdered spices between each layer.

  3. Boil the cider vinegar for five minutes and pour it hot over the nuts.

  4. Seal the jars tightly with corks.

  5. You can start eating the nuts in two weeks.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Butternut + nutmegtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Butternut + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butternuts or walnuts
Provide the firm flesh that absorbs the brine, spices and vinegar flavour.
Cider vinegar
Acidic liquid that preserves the nuts and carries the pickling flavour.
Black pepper
Adds pungent heat that mellows as the pickle matures.
Ginger root
Adds warm, aromatic spice that penetrates the nuts during pickling.

The step that matters

Soaking the nuts in brine for six days. The brine draws out bitterness and tannins from the nut skins and flesh and firms the texture. Changing the water every other day keeps the brine strong and prevents spoilage, so skipping changes or leaving the nuts uncovered risks off flavours and mould.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butternut, pepper, ginger, clove, nutmeg, mustard, cider):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butternut, pepper, ginger, clove, nutmeg, mustard, cider. 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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