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White Walnut Pickle

A pickle of walnuts preserved in vinegar with mustard seed, onion, allspice, black pepper, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

White Walnut Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Soak the walnuts in strong salt water for 10 to 12 days.

  2. Scald the walnuts in a mixture of ashes and water to remove the fur and gummy substance.

  3. Wipe the walnuts with a soft cloth, being careful not to bruise them.

Pickle

  1. Submerge the walnuts in cold vinegar until autumn.

  2. Change the vinegar and add mustard seed, onion, allspice, black pepper, and horseradish.

  3. Mix the spices with the vinegar and pour over the walnuts in a jar.

  4. Cover the jar with a bladder and let it sit for six months.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Allspice + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Provide the main body and flavour of the pickle as they steep in the vinegar.
Cold vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid that softens and flavours the walnuts over time.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent bite that carries through the pickling liquid.
Horseradish
Contributes a hot, pungent heat that deepens as it steeps.

The step that matters

Wipe the walnuts gently. Walnut skins bruise easily, and bruised nuts release bitter compounds and break down in the vinegar, so wiping with a soft cloth keeps them whole.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, onion, clove, allspice, pepper, horseradish, vinegar. 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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