Skip to main content
Main

Walnuts and Butternuts

Walnuts pickled in vinegar with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Walnuts and Butternuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Pick walnuts when a pin can easily pierce them.

  2. Run a large needle through each walnut or score one side with a knife.

  3. Soak walnuts in a brine of salt and water for 12 days, changing the brine twice.

  4. Drain the walnuts and place them in a jar, sprinkling a little salt over them.

Pickle and seal

  1. Boil 4 quarts of vinegar with the spices and garlic or onion.

  2. Pour the hot vinegar over the walnuts and cover with a plate.

  3. Once cooled, seal the jar tightly.

  4. After using the walnuts, boil and strain the leftover liquid to use as a pickle.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Are the main ingredient, softening and darkening as they steep in brine and vinegar.
Vinegar
Acidic liquid that preserves the walnuts and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Whole black pepper
Adds pungent, warm heat that flavours the pickling liquid.
Whole allspice
Contributes warm, clove-like aroma to the pickling liquid.
Ginger
Adds spicy, aromatic warmth to the vinegar.
Garlic or onion
Adds savoury aromatic depth to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Soaking the walnuts in brine for 12 days. Salt brine draws out bitterness and moisture from the unripe walnut and slows spoilage. Changing the brine keeps it strong, so the walnuts are properly seasoned and safe before pickling.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, mustard, horseradish):

  1. Lentilsfits about as well
  2. Cashew nutfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, mustard, horseradish. 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.

You might also like

Horseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce17 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes