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To Pickle Walnuts

A preserved walnut dish soaked in brine and seasoned with spices, then pickled in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,053 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

To Pickle Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Soak walnuts in salt and water for 2-3 days, changing the water daily.

  2. Make a brine strong enough to float an egg; boil and skim it, then let it cool.

  3. Soak walnuts in the brine for 6 days, then change the brine and soak for another 6 days.

  4. Drain the walnuts and expose them to sunlight until they turn black.

Pickle and store

  1. In a jar, combine white-wine vinegar with pepper, pimento, ginger, mace, cloves, mustard-seed, and horseradish; boil and let cool.

  2. Pour the vinegar mixture over the walnuts, ensuring they are fully covered.

  3. Seal the jar tightly; they will be ready to eat in 6 months and can last for several years.

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 + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Garlic + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Walnut + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
The main ingredient; soaking in salt brine softens the husk and draws out bitterness as they darken.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the walnuts and seasons them during the long brine soaks.
White-wine vinegar
Acidity that preserves the walnuts and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy flavour.
Mustard-seed
Adds a sharp, pungent heat and aroma to the pickling liquid.
Black pepper
Contributes warm, sharp spice to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Changing the brine and the sunlight stage. Walnuts must be fully covered in fresh brine and not left to sit in spent liquid, since weak or old brine lets them spoil. Sunlight darkens the husks through oxidation of their phenolic compounds, so the change to black is the cue that the walnuts are ready for the vinegar.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, wine, vinegar, mustard, pepper, garlic, ginger):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, wine, vinegar, mustard, pepper, garlic, ginger. 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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