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Walnut Pickle

A pickle made by soaking walnuts in salt, sun‑drying, then preserving in spiced vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,800 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Walnut Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Gather walnuts when they are fully grown and soft enough to pierce with a needle, then prick them well.

  2. Soak the walnuts in a strong salt solution for three days, changing the brine halfway through.

  3. Drain the walnuts and expose them to the sun for 1–2 days, turning until black all over.

Pickle

  1. To prepare the vinegar, boil 6 pints of vinegar with 1 ounce of black pepper, ¼ ounce of mace, and 1½ ounces of bruised ginger.

  2. Place the walnuts in a jar and pour boiling vinegar over them, infused with spices.

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. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Walnut + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Mace + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
The main ingredient; brine softens and firms them, and sun exposure darkens the skin.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that preserves the walnuts and balances their richness.
Black pepper
Adds a sharp, warm aroma to the infused vinegar.
Mace
Adds a delicate, warm aroma to the infused vinegar.
Ginger
Adds a fresh, spicy aroma to the infused vinegar.

The step that matters

Soaking the walnuts in strong brine. The brine must be strong enough to float an egg, since salt draws water out of the walnuts and firms their flesh. Changing the brine halfway keeps the salt strong throughout the three days.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, egg, vinegar, pepper, 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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