Name: White Walnuts
Ingredients: walnuts; coarse sea salt; water; weak vinegar; strong vinegar; grated horseradish; cloves; mustard seed; red pepper

Why it works: Horseradish and mustard 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 ↓

White Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Pick walnuts when soft enough for a pin to easily pierce them.
Boil water with enough salt to create a strong brine; skim and let it cool.
Pour the cooled brine over the walnuts and let them sit for 14 days.
After 14 days, soak the walnuts in cold water for 2 days.
Boil the walnuts in weak vinegar and let them sit for 1 week.
Simmer enough strong vinegar to cover the walnuts.
In a jar, layer the walnuts with grated horseradish, cloves, mustard seed, and red pepper.
Pour the hot vinegar over the layered ingredients.

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.

Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,832 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Horseradish + clovetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,245 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,829 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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, horseradish, clove, mustard, pepper):

Lentilsfits better
Beansfits better
Chestnutfits better
Walnutthe original

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