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Pickled Butter Nuts and Walnuts

A pickled mixture of butter nuts and walnuts flavored with vinegar, sugar, spices, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Butter Nuts and Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the nuts

  1. Pick green nuts at the end of June.

  2. Make a brine strong enough to hold an egg.

  3. Cover the nuts with the brine and let sit for 6 days.

  4. Wash off the brine from the nuts.

Steep in spiced vinegar

  1. Cover the nuts with boiling vinegar.

  2. Add brown sugar, cloves, cinnamon, mustard, and nutmeg to the vinegar.

  3. Let the mixture stand for three days.

  4. Discard the vinegar.

  5. Prepare fresh vinegar in the same way.

Finish and jar

  1. Heat the fresh vinegar to boiling point.

  2. Add ground horseradish and ginger root to the boiling vinegar.

  3. Place the nuts in a stone jar.

  4. Cover the nuts with the fresh vinegar.

  5. Repeat the heating and sealing process for three days.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Green nuts
Form the firm, pickled base that absorbs the brine and spiced vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the nuts.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet aroma to the pickling liquid.
Ginger root
Adds a sharp, peppery aroma and gentle heat.
Ground horseradish
Adds pungent heat that mellows as the pickle matures.

The step that matters

Make the brine strong enough to hold an egg. Salt draws water out of the nuts and slows spoilage by microbes. A weak brine lets the nuts soften or spoil before the vinegar can protect them.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, vinegar, sugar, clove, cinnamon, mustard, nutmeg):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, sugar, clove, cinnamon, mustard, nutmeg. 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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