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To Pickle Walnuts Black

Walnuts are pickled in a blackened vinegar solution 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 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 ↓

To Pickle Walnuts Black

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Gather walnuts when the shell is soft; test with 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. Hang walnuts in a hair sieve until they turn black.

Pickle and seal

  1. Place walnuts in stone jars and pour boiling vinegar over them; cover and let cool.

  2. Boil the vinegar three more times, letting it cool between each boiling.

  3. Seal jars with paper and a bladder, and let them stand for two months.

  4. Prepare a pickle by boiling vinegar with mace, cloves, black pepper, Jamaica pepper, ginger, long pepper, and common salt for ten minutes.

  5. 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

Walnuts
Their soft shell and dense flesh absorb brine and vinegar, becoming darkened and firm as they pickle.
Boiling vinegar
Acidity preserves the walnuts and carries the spices into the nuts over time.
Common salt
Salt draws moisture out of the walnuts and helps preserve them in the brine.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat that flavours the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Hanging the walnuts until they turn black. The walnuts must be dried in air until the skins darken; stopping early leaves them pale and under-prepared for the vinegar, while the long brine soak draws out bitterness and moisture so the pickle keeps well.

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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