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Walnuts Pickled White

A preserved walnut dish pickled in vinegar with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and laurel are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,516 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Walnuts Pickled White

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Peel the walnuts to expose the white kernels.

  2. Prepare a brine with 1 pound of salt in 1 gallon of water and soak the peeled walnuts for 4 hours.

  3. Bring a pan of pure water to a boil, then simmer the walnuts for 10-12 minutes.

  4. Transfer the walnuts to a pan of cold water with a little salt for 10 minutes.

  5. Move the walnuts to a pickle made with 2½ pounds of salt in 1 gallon of water and let them soak for 30 minutes.

  6. Remove the walnuts and dry them between cloths, wiping each nut individually.

Pickle and seal

  1. Place the walnuts in clean white earthenware jars, adding the bruised mace, cloves, white pepper, bay leaves, and laurel leaves.

  2. Fill the jars with best white-wine vinegar and seal them with bladder and leather.

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 + laureltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Walnut + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Mace + laureltop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,164 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Form the pickled body; their kernels soften and absorb the brine and vinegar flavours.
Sea salt
Draws out moisture and firms the walnuts while seasoning them through the brine.
White-wine vinegar
Acidity that preserves the walnuts and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy flavour.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice that infuses the walnuts during pickling.
Bay leaves
Contributes herbal aroma that infuses into the vinegar and walnuts.

The step that matters

Drying the walnuts before jarring. Any water left on the nuts dilutes the vinegar and can encourage spoilage, so wiping each nut dry helps the pickle keep and stay sharp.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, wine, vinegar, mace, clove, laurel):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, wine, vinegar, mace, clove, laurel. 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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