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To Pickle Walnuts White

A method for pickling green walnuts in salt, spices, and 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 ↓

To Pickle Walnuts White

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Pare green walnuts very thin until the white appears.

  2. Soak them in spring water with a handful of coarse sea salt for 6 hours.

  3. Simmer the walnuts in a stewpan for 5 minutes without boiling.

  4. Transfer them to cold water with salt, keeping them submerged with a board.

  5. Lay the walnuts on a cloth and cover them with another cloth to dry.

  6. Rub them gently with a soft cloth.

Pickle and store

  1. Place the walnuts in a jar with sliced blades of mace and nutmeg.

  2. Pour strong vinegar over the walnuts and seal the jar for storage.

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. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Walnut + macetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together765 recipes

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

  4. Walnut + vinegartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Mace + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,415 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Green walnuts
Provide the main body of the pickle, absorbing salt and vinegar flavour as they soften.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out bitterness and moisture from the walnuts during soaking and brining.
Strong vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid, adding sharp acidity that keeps the walnuts stable in the jar.
Blades of mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour that infuses the walnuts as they pickle.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, sweet aroma that complements the mace in the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer without boiling. Gentle simmering softens the walnuts evenly. A rolling boil would toughen and break them apart, so keep the liquid just below the boil.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, nutmeg, vinegar. 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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