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Pickled Walnuts

Pickled walnuts preserved in spiced vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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 Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the walnuts and pack them in a jar.

  2. Mix allspice, black pepper, long pepper, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and mustard flour together.

  3. Strew the spice mixture between the layers of walnuts.

Pickle

  1. Boil the vinegar and pour it hot over the pickles, repeating this process three times.

  2. If walnuts are hard, boil them again, adding garlic in the last boiling.

  3. Seal the jar tightly and do not open for 4 months.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Are the main body of the pickle, softening and taking on the spiced vinegar flavour over time.
Vinegar
Acts as the pickling liquid, preserving the walnuts and carrying the spice flavour into them.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic flavour that defines the pickle's character.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat that balances the sweetness of the walnuts.
Mustard flour
Adds pungency and sharpness that contributes to the pickle's tang.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling vinegar over the walnuts. Hot vinegar penetrates the walnuts and helps keep the pickle preserved; repeating the boil three times is what gives the vinegar a chance to work through the nuts and drive out the flavour.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, allspice, pepper, ginger, nutmeg, mustard, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, allspice, pepper, ginger, nutmeg, mustard, flour. 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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