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To Pickle Butternuts

A preserved butternut squash pickled with spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

To Pickle Butternuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the nuts

  1. Gather butternuts when the shell is soft and the outer skin can be pierced.

  2. Clean the nuts in a tub with lye, stirring with a hickory broom, or scald and rub off the skin.

  3. Soak the nuts in strong saltwater for 9-10 days, changing the water every other day.

  4. Drain and wipe the nuts, piercing each one several times with a large needle.

Spice and pack

  1. Pound the black pepper, ginger, cloves, mace, and nutmeg to a powder and mix with mustard seed.

  2. Layer the nuts in jars, sprinkling the spice mixture between each layer.

Pickle and seal

  1. Boil the white wine vinegar for 5 minutes and pour it hot over the nuts.

  2. Seal the jars tightly with corks and leather.

  3. The nuts can be eaten after two weeks.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Butternut + nutmegtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Butternut + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16 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

Butternuts
Form the main body of the pickle, taking on flavor from the brine and spices.
White wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the nuts and gives the pickle its sharp taste.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, warm spice that flavors the nuts as they pickle.
Ginger root
Adds warm, aromatic spice to the pickling liquid and the nuts.
Mustard seed
Contributes a pungent, slightly bitter bite to the spiced pickle.

The step that matters

Piercing the nuts before pickling. Piercing lets the vinegar and spices penetrate the dense flesh; unpierced nuts would stay bland and may keep their raw texture inside.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butternut, pepper, ginger, clove, nutmeg, mustard, white wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butternut, pepper, ginger, clove, nutmeg, mustard, white wine. 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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