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Pickles, Etc

A pickled nut preserve made by simmering nuts, brining them, seasoning with mace and nutmeg, and sealing in white wine vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Pickles, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the nuts

  1. Simmer fresh nuts in a preserving pan with water for five minutes, covered lightly.

  2. Prepare a basin of water with dissolved salt.

  3. Transfer the nuts to the saltwater using a wooden pickle spoon and cover with a wooden board.

  4. After two hours, remove the nuts and dry them with a clean, soft cloth.

Pickle and seal

  1. Place the nuts in a jar with mace and nutmeg, then cover with white wine vinegar and seal with a skin.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Nuts + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 recipes

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

  4. White wine + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,329 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. White wine + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,659 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh nuts
Form the main body of the pickle, absorbing the salt brine and vinegar flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and firms the nuts before they are pickled.
White wine vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the nuts and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, vinegar, mace, 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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