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Pickled Butternuts

Pickled butternuts are butternut squash preserved in a vinegar brine with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice 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 ↓

Pickled Butternuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather butternuts in the last week of June.

  2. Scald and rub off the outside skin.

  3. Soak butternuts in a strong salt and water brine for nine days, keeping them covered from the air.

  4. Drain the butternuts and prepare the pickle.

Pickle and seal

  1. In a pot, combine cider vinegar, black pepper, ginger root, ground cloves, allspice, mustard seed, and horseradish.

  2. Heat the vinegar mixture to boiling point.

  3. Place the butternuts into jars and pour the boiling vinegar over them.

  4. Seal the jars tightly.

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. Clove + allspicetop 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. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Butternut + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butternuts
Form the main body of the pickle and absorb the brine and vinegar flavours.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour that carries through the vinegar.
Ginger root
Adds warm, aromatic spice to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Soaking in the salt and water brine. Salt draws water out of the squash and firms its flesh, so the brine must be strong and the butternuts kept fully covered to avoid air exposure and spoilage over the nine days.

Swap the butternut

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

  1. Chickpeafits about as well
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Butternutthe original
  4. Lentilsfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, pepper, ginger, clove, allspice, 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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