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Walnut Pickle

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 ↓

Walnut Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Gather young walnuts when you can easily pierce them with a pin.

  2. Peel the walnuts to the kernel and place them in a strong brine of salt and water.

  3. Scald the walnuts in the brine for nine days, pouring off the brine every morning, boiling it, and pouring it back.

  4. After nine days, soak the walnuts in a mixture of vinegar and water for three days.

  5. Boil enough vinegar to cover the walnuts, adding cloves, allspice, ginger, mustard seed, cinnamon, and horseradish.

  6. Pour the boiling vinegar mixture over the drained walnuts and seal tightly.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, clove, allspice, ginger, mustard, cinnamon, horseradish. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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