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Pickled Butternuts and Walnuts

A pickled mixture of butternuts and walnuts preserved in a vinegar brine with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 and Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the nuts

  1. Soak the nuts in brine for 5 days, changing the brine twice.

  2. Drain and wipe the nuts with a coarse cloth.

  3. Pierce each nut with a large needle and soak in cold water for 6 hours.

Make the pickle

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, sugar, cloves, black peppercorns, allspice, and mace; boil for 5 minutes.

  2. Pack the nuts into small jars and pour the hot vinegar mixture over them.

  3. Repeat the packing and pouring process twice within a week.

  4. Seal the jars and store them away. They will be ready to eat in a month.

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. Butternut + walnuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together15 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Walnut + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butternut + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together12 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
Their firm flesh softens during brining and absorbs the spiced vinegar, becoming tender and flavourful.
Walnuts
Their firm flesh softens during brining and absorbs the spiced vinegar, becoming tender and flavourful.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the nuts and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy character.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Piercing each nut before the cold-water soak. Piercing lets the brine and later the spiced vinegar penetrate the nut's interior; without it, the flavour stays on the surface and the centre remains dense.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butternut, walnut, vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butternut, walnut, vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice. 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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