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Pickled Walnuts

Pickled walnuts are green walnuts preserved in a brine of salt, water, vinegar, cloves, horseradish, and mustard seed.

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

Pickled Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick the walnuts when they are green and soft.

  2. Prick them well with a fork.

Brine and pickle

  1. Boil 4 pounds of salt in 1 gallon of water, then strain it clear.

  2. Place the walnuts in a stone jar.

  3. Pour the boiling brine over them.

  4. Let the walnuts stand in the sun for 2-3 days.

  5. Drain them into a basket.

  6. Put the walnuts back into the jar.

Add vinegar and seal

  1. Boil enough cider vinegar to cover the walnuts.

  2. Add cloves, horseradish, and mustard seed.

  3. Pour the boiling vinegar over the walnuts and cover tightly.

  4. In 2 weeks, the pickled walnuts will be ready to use.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Clove + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

Green walnuts
The main ingredient, soft when green, absorbs the brine and vinegar flavours as it pickles.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the walnuts and helps preserve them in the brine.
Cider vinegar
Its acidity preserves the walnuts and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy flavour.
Whole cloves
Adds warm, spicy aroma to the pickling liquid and the walnuts.
Horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent heat that softens over the pickling period.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling vinegar over the walnuts and cover tightly. Vinegar is what preserves the walnuts. Covering them fully with hot vinegar keeps every piece submerged and sealed from air, which helps prevent spoilage during the 2 weeks of pickling.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, clove, horseradish, mustard. 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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