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Pickled Walnuts

Pickled walnuts soaked in salt, then sun-dried, boiled with spices and vinegar, and left to sit for weeks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Soak the walnuts in salt and water for 3 days.

  2. Place the soaked walnuts in the sun until they turn black.

Pickle

  1. Boil the mustard seed, pepper, cloves, mace, nutmeg, horse-radish, and vinegar together.

  2. Cover the walnuts with the boiled mixture and let them sit for 3 to 4 weeks.

  3. If desired, pour off the liquid for catsup and bottle it.

  4. Cover the walnuts again with cold vinegar.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mustard + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

White walnuts
Provide the main body of the pickle, absorbing the spiced vinegar as they steep.
Vinegar
Acts as the pickling liquid, preserving the walnuts and giving them their sharp acidity.
Mustard seed
Adds pungency and a sharp, warm bite to the pickling liquid.
Horse-radish
Contributes a sharp, pungent heat that carries into the pickle.

The step that matters

Sun-darkening the soaked walnuts. The walnuts must be left in the sun until they turn black before pickling. Soaking in salt water and sun exposure change the color and flavor of the nut, so stopping early leaves the walnuts pale and under-developed in taste.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, mustard, pepper, clove, nutmeg, horse, radish):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, mustard, pepper, clove, nutmeg, horse, radish. 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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