Name: Butternuts and Walnuts
Ingredients: butternuts or walnuts; water; coarse sea salt; vinegar; cloves; allspice; ginger; mace; horseradish

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 ↓

Butternuts and Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Gather butternuts or walnuts in early July when the rind is easily pierced.
Make a brine with water and coarse sea salt that can float an egg.
Skim the brine and pour it over the nuts.
After 10 days, drain the nuts and place them in a jar or wooden keg.
Boil vinegar with cloves, allspice, ginger, mace, and horseradish, then cool it.
Pour the cooled spiced vinegar over the nuts, cover tightly, and let them sit for a year.

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.

Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,038 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,620 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Butternut + horseradishtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Allspice + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together654 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the mace

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

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Turmericfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butternut, vinegar, clove, allspice, ginger, horseradish. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.