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Walnuts Pickled Green

Pickled green walnuts preserved in vinegar with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Walnuts Pickled Green

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Gather 50 large green walnuts before the shell hardens.

  2. Fold each walnut in vine leaves and place them in a jar with more leaves to prevent touching.

  3. Cover the walnuts with pale vinegar and seal the jar tightly to exclude air.

  4. Let them stand for 20 days.

  5. Pour off the vinegar and wrap the walnuts again in fresh leaves.

  6. Fill the jar with fresh pale vinegar and let them stand for another 14 days.

Make the pickle

  1. Remove the leaves and prepare a pickle with white wine vinegar and coarse sea salt.

  2. Add mace, cloves, nutmeg, and sliced garlic to the vinegar and simmer for 15 minutes.

  3. Pour the hot pickle over the walnuts and seal the jar 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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Green walnuts
Unripe, soft-shelled walnuts that soften and darken in vinegar, becoming the pickled fruit.
Pale vinegar
Acid that preserves the walnuts and draws out their bitterness during the long standing periods.
White wine vinegar
Acidic base of the hot pickle that carries the spices and preserves the finished walnuts.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savoury flavour to the pickling liquid.
Mace
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickle.
Cloves
Contributes strong warm aroma and spice flavour to the pickle.

The step that matters

Sealing the jar tightly during the first standing period. Covering the walnuts with vinegar and excluding air keeps them submerged and limits spoilage, so the jar must stay sealed while they stand for 20 days.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, vinegar, white wine, egg, clove, nutmeg, garlic):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, vinegar, white wine, egg, clove, nutmeg, garlic. 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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