Skip to main content
Main

Pickled Walnuts

Pickled walnuts are small green walnuts soaked in brine, then pickled in a boiled cider vinegar mixture with pepper, ginger, mustard seed, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Pickled Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Gather green walnuts that are small enough to fit a pin.

  2. Wipe the walnuts and place them in a cold brine of salt and water strong enough to float an egg.

  3. Let them soak for six days, then change the brine and soak for three more days.

Pickle and mature

  1. Drain the walnuts and pour over them a pickle made of cider vinegar, black pepper, ginger, mustard seed, and horseradish, all boiled together and cooled.

  2. Allow the pickled walnuts to mature for six months before consuming.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + horseradishtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together259 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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

Green walnuts
Unripe nuts whose flesh softens and darkens as they soak and pickle, forming the dish's main texture.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the walnuts during brining, reducing bitterness and firming the flesh.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the walnuts and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour that develops as the walnuts mature in the pickle.
Horseradish
Contributes sharp, pungent heat that mellows during the long maturing period.

The step that matters

Soaking in the brine. The brine must be strong enough to float an egg and the walnuts must stay fully submerged. Enough salt draws out bitter compounds and preserves the nuts, while weak brine or exposed nuts can let spoilage start.

Swap the walnut

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

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

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

You might also like

Horseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce17 recipesHam in CiderHam in Cider10 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes