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Pickled English Walnuts

Green walnuts pickled in saltwater, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pickled English Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Procure green walnuts by the end of June.

  2. Prick the walnuts thoroughly.

  3. Cover the walnuts in a jar with ½ cup coarse sea salt and enough water to submerge them for four days.

Pickle

  1. Boil the spices (ginger, cinnamon, mace, cloves, and black peppercorns) in vinegar.

  2. Pour off the water from the walnuts and add the vinegar and spices.

  3. Let the walnuts sit for six weeks before using.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Walnut + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Green walnuts
Unripe nuts whose soft, pliable shell and interior become dark and mellow during pickling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the walnuts and helps firm them before the vinegar pickling.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the walnuts and carries the flavour of the spices into the nuts.
Spices
Ginger, cinnamon, mace, cloves and peppercorns give the pickle its warm, aromatic flavour.

The step that matters

Pricking the walnuts thoroughly. Pricks let the salt brine and then the vinegar penetrate the thick green husk and interior. Without enough pricks, the walnuts may stay bitter inside and the pickling liquid will not flavour them evenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, vinegar, ginger, cinnamon, clove. 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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