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Pickle Walnuts

Pickled walnuts preserved in a spiced vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickle Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Gather black walnuts when the shell is soft, indicated by inserting a pin.

  2. Soak walnuts in a strong brine (salt and water) for nine days, stirring twice daily and changing the brine every three days.

  3. Drain and air dry walnuts until they turn black.

Pickle with vinegar

  1. Place walnuts in stone jars.

  2. Pour boiling vinegar over the walnuts.

  3. Cover and let cool.

  4. Boil the vinegar three more times, cooling between each boil.

  5. Seal jars with paper and a bladder and let them sit for two months.

Add the spiced pickle

  1. Boil vinegar with mace, cloves, black pepper, Jamaica pepper, ginger, long pepper, and common salt for ten minutes.

  2. Pour the hot pickle over the walnuts and seal again.

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 + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  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

Black walnuts
Provide the main body of the pickle, becoming dark and firm as they cure.
Common salt
Draws moisture out of the walnuts and seasons them during the brine soak.
Boiling vinegar
Acidity preserves the walnuts and sharpens their flavour during pickling.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickling liquid.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat and aroma to the pickle.
Ginger
Adds warm, fragrant spice that balances the sharp vinegar.

The step that matters

Soaking the walnuts in brine. Salt draws water out of the walnut husks and slows spoilage, so the brine must be strong and changed regularly. Skipping changes lets the liquid weaken and the walnuts spoil before the vinegar stage.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, vinegar, clove, pepper, ginger):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, vinegar, clove, pepper, ginger. 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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