Name: Walnuts
Ingredients: green walnuts (before shells form); ½ cup good vinegar; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 teaspoon horseradish; 1 teaspoon bruised pepper; 1 teaspoon ginger; 1 teaspoon cloves

Why it works: Ginger and clove 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 ↓

Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Gather green walnuts and remove the stalks. Place them in a jar.

Make the pickling liquid

Boil vinegar with salt, horseradish, bruised pepper, ginger, and cloves.
Pour the hot mixture over the walnuts.

Cover and store

When cold, cover with a bladder and let stand for a year.

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.

Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,038 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Horseradish + clovetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,245 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Walnut + horseradishtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together259 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green walnuts: The main ingredient, which softens and takes on the spiced vinegar's flavour over time.
Vinegar: Provides acidity that preserves the walnuts and gives the pickle its sharp taste.
Horseradish: Adds a sharp, pungent heat that mellows during the long steeping.
Ginger: Contributes a warm, aromatic spice note to the vinegar.
Cloves: Adds a strong, sweet aroma that flavours the pickling liquid.

Swap the walnut

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

Beansfits better
Chickpeafits about as well
Cashew nutfits about as well
Walnutthe original

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