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To Pickle Walnuts Black

A method for pickling walnuts in a spiced vinegar solution, resulting in blackened, preserved nuts.

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 sun is hot upon them, before the shell hardens.

  2. Place them in a strong saltwater solution for 9 days, stirring twice daily and changing the salt and water every 3 days.

  3. Let them air dry in a hand sieve until they turn black.

Pickle

  1. Put them in strong stone jars and pour boiling vinegar over them. Cover and let them cool.

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

  3. Tie down with paper and a bladder, and let them stand for 2 months.

Make the spiced pickle

  1. For the pickle, boil 2 quarts of vinegar with ½ ounce mace, 1 ounce cloves, 1 ounce black pepper, 1 ounce Jamaica pepper, 1 ounce ginger, 1 ounce long pepper, and 2 ounces common salt for 10 minutes.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the walnuts and tie them down with a bladder and paper.

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
Provide the main body that softens and darkens during the salt brine and air drying.
Common salt
Draws moisture out of the walnuts and helps preserve them during the brine.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the walnuts and carries the spice flavours into them.
Cloves
Adds warm aromatic flavour to the pickling liquid.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent spice that flavours the pickle.

The step that matters

Boil the vinegar three more times, letting it cool between each boiling. Repeated boiling and cooling of the vinegar is the step that is easiest to skip or rush. Reheating the liquid helps it stay effective for preserving the walnuts, and the cooling between boilings lets the vinegar be poured and handled safely.

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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