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Dessert

Walnut Pickle

A pickled walnut preserve made with ginger, pepper, allspice, cloves, sugar, onions, and red pepper, finished in cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Walnut Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select young English walnuts, about June 20, and pierce them with a pin.

  2. Pour boiling brine over the walnuts and let them stand for ten days or longer.

  3. Pour off the brine and cover the walnuts with clear boiling water.

  4. Change the water after 24 hours and let it stand overnight.

Dry and blacken

  1. Spread the walnuts on dishes and place them in the sun to dry.

  2. After one or two days, they will turn black.

Pack and cover

  1. In a stone jar, layer the walnuts with the seasoning: ginger, black pepper, allspice, cloves, brown sugar, chopped onions, and red pepper. Mix well and cover with good cider 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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 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. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and body that balances the sharp vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the pickle and helps preserve the walnuts.
Onions
Add savoury sharpness and aroma to the pickle.
Race ginger
Contributes warm, aromatic spice to the seasoning.

The step that matters

Cover the walnuts fully with cider vinegar. Vinegar must completely cover the walnuts so none stay exposed to air. Its acidity inhibits spoilage microbes, so submerged pieces keep far better.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, ginger, pepper, allspice, clove, sugar, cider):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, ginger, pepper, allspice, clove, sugar, cider. 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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