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To Preferve Walnuts White

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Preferve Walnuts White

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove the shells from the walnuts, leaving them whole.

  2. Soak the walnuts in saltwater.

  3. Boil the walnuts in a large saucepan of water for 5 minutes.

  4. Drain and place them between two cloths until you prepare a thin syrup.

  5. Boil the syrup gently with the walnuts for 4-5 minutes, then transfer to a jar.

  6. Seal the jar tightly to prevent air from entering.

  7. The next day, boil the walnuts again.

  8. Make a fresh thick syrup with sugar, ginger, and mace, then boil the walnuts in it.

  9. Store the walnuts in glass jars, covering them with brandy-soaked paper and sealing with bladders.

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

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.

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