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Walnuts Pickled Green

Walnuts pickled in vinegar, salt, mace, nutmeg, and horseradish, wrapped in vine leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Leslie · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Walnuts Pickled Green

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Gather the walnuts while the shells are very soft, and rub them all with a flannel.

  2. Wrap each walnut singly in vine leaves.

  3. Lay a few vine leaves in the bottom of a large stone jar.

  4. Put the wrapped walnuts in the jar, ensuring each is well wrapped so as not to touch one another.

  5. Cover the walnuts with a thick layer of vine leaves.

Steep in vinegar

  1. Fill up the jar with strong vinegar.

  2. Cover the jar closely.

  3. Let it stand for three weeks.

  4. Pour off the vinegar and take out the walnuts.

  5. Renew all the vine leaves.

  6. Fill up the jar with fresh vinegar.

  7. Let them stand for three weeks longer.

  8. Pour off the vinegar again.

  9. Renew the vine leaves.

Make the spiced pickle

  1. Take the best white wine vinegar.

  2. Put salt in it until it will bear an egg.

  3. Add mace, sliced nutmeg, and scraped horseradish, in the proportion of an ounce of each and a gallon of vinegar to a hundred walnuts.

  4. Boil the spice and vinegar about eight minutes.

  5. Pour the hot mixture over the walnuts.

Seal and store

  1. Cover the jar closely with a cork and leather.

  2. Set it away, leaving the vine leaves with the walnuts.

  3. When you take any out for use, disturb the others as little as possible, and do not put back again any that may be left.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

41Calories
1 gProtein
3 gFat
2 gCarbs

Counts 4 of 5 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Walnut1 walnut half (4g)26
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Vinegar1 tbsp (15ml) distilled3
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Eliza Leslie. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Walnut + macetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together765 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Vinegar + walnuttop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Vinegar + macetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,415 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
The main food, which takes on flavor from the vinegar brine as it steeps.
Vinegar
Its acidity sharpens flavor and helps preserve the walnuts in the jar.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickling liquid.
Nutmeg
Adds a sweet, warm aroma to the spiced vinegar.

The step that matters

Boil the spice and vinegar about eight minutes. Heat draws aromatic compounds out of spices into the liquid. Boiling too briefly leaves the flavor weak, while long boiling can dull the aroma and sharpen the vinegar.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, walnut, nutmeg. 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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