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Walnuts and Butternuts

A pickled walnut and butternut recipe using vinegar, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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. Grate the walnuts when a pin can pierce them easily.

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

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

Pickle

  1. Strain and place them in a jar, sprinkling a little salt over them.

  2. Boil 4 quarts of vinegar with the spices and pour it hot over the nuts.

  3. Cover the jar with a plate and tie it down when cool.

Reuse the liquid

  1. After using the nuts, 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
The main pickled ingredient, softening and absorbing the brine and spiced vinegar as it sits.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the pickled nuts.
Whole allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the vinegar.
Ginger
Adds a pungent, aromatic warmth that carries into the pickling liquid.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent note to the spiced vinegar.

The step that matters

Soaking the walnuts in brine for 12 days. Salt draws moisture out of the walnuts and seasons them through, so the full soak matters. Changing the brine twice keeps the liquid fresh and reduces the chance of spoilage.

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.

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