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To Preserve Walnuts Green

A method of preserving walnuts green by layering vine leaves, soaking, and coating with a sweet syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and ginger work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 737 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

To Preserve Walnuts Green

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Wrap each walnut in vine leaves and tie with string.

  2. Soak the walnuts in a mixture of salt and water for three days.

  3. Change the saltwater and soak for another three days.

  4. Layer vine leaves and walnuts in a pan, ensuring they do not touch.

  5. Fill the pan with hard water and a bit of roach alum.

  6. Heat the water until very hot but do not boil.

  7. Remove from heat and let the walnuts sit in the water until cold.

  8. Heat the water again, then remove the walnuts when green.

  9. Place the walnuts on a sieve to dry, spaced apart.

Make the syrup and preserve

  1. Prepare a thin syrup by boiling and skimming sugar until cool.

  2. Soak the walnuts in the syrup overnight.

  3. Give the walnuts several scalds the next day without boiling.

  4. Cover the preserving pan and watch for bright color.

  5. Make a rich syrup with fine loaf sugar, ginger, and mace.

  6. Add the walnuts to the syrup and transfer to small jars.

  7. Cover the jars with paper dipped in brandy and seal tightly.

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. Walnut + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Ginger + macetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Walnut + brandytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Large french walnuts
Form the main preserved substance, becoming tender and dark as they are soaked and heated.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out bitterness and moisture from the green walnuts during the saltwater soaks.
Fine loaf sugar
Forms the syrup that preserves the walnuts and gives them sweetness.
Roach alum
Firms the walnut flesh so it keeps its shape during repeated heating.
Brandy
Adds aroma and helps protect the jars' surface against spoilage.

The step that matters

Do not let the water boil when heating the walnuts. Boiling toughens and breaks the walnut skins and flesh, while gentle near-boiling heat softens them evenly so they keep their shape and color.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, sugar, ginger, brandy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, sugar, ginger, brandy. 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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