Skip to main content
Main

To Pickle Walnuts an Olive Colour

Walnuts pickled in vinegar with spices for long-term storage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

To Pickle Walnuts an Olive Colour

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Gather walnuts and place them in strong ale vinegar.

  2. Cover the walnuts with a bladder and paper to keep out air, and let them stand for twelve months.

  3. After a year, remove the walnuts from the vinegar.

Make the spiced pickle

  1. In a pot, combine strong ale vinegar, Jamaica pepper, long pepper, mace, cloves, garlic, and salt.

  2. Boil the mixture for 5-6 minutes.

  3. Pour the mixture over the walnuts when cool.

  4. Repeat the boiling and pouring process three times.

  5. Cover the walnuts again with a bladder and paper.

  6. Store in jars; they will keep for several years without changing color or becoming soft.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Walnut + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Form the main body of the pickle, absorbing the vinegar and spices over the long steeping.
Strong ale vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and flavors the walnuts during steeping.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that infuses into the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Covering the walnuts to keep out air. Excluding air limits oxidation and microbial growth during the long steep, helping the walnuts keep their color and texture. A gap in the covering lets air in and can darken or soften them.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

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

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes