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Pickled Butternuts or Walnuts

Pickled nuts preserved in a spiced vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Butternuts or Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the nuts

  1. Gather butternuts or walnuts when soft enough to pierce with a pin.

  2. Soak them in strong brine for five days, changing the brine twice.

  3. Drain and wipe the nuts dry, then pierce each with a large darning needle.

  4. Soak the pierced nuts in cold water for six hours.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, sugar, cloves, black peppercorns, allspice, and mace.

  2. Boil the mixture for five minutes.

Pack and store

  1. Pack the nuts into small jars and cover with the hot vinegar.

  2. Repeat the packing process twice within a week.

  3. Seal the jars and store them.

  4. The pickled nuts will be good to eat in a month.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Butternut + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Butternut + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together18 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butternuts or walnuts
The main ingredient, which takes on the sharp, spiced flavour of the pickling liquid.
Strong brine
Draws out moisture and seasons the nuts before pickling.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.
Whole cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice to the pickling liquid.
Black peppercorns
Add sharp, pungent spice to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Piercing the nuts before soaking. Piercing each nut lets the brine and vinegar penetrate the shell and flesh; without it, the liquid cannot flavour the nut evenly through the pickling period.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butternut, vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butternut, vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice. 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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