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To Pickle Walnuts

A pickle of walnuts soaked in brine and seasoned with vinegar, spices, and mustard seed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,053 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

To Pickle Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the walnuts

  1. Prepare a brine with salt and water strong enough to float an egg.

  2. Let the brine cool.

  3. Soak the walnuts in the brine for six days, skimming while boiling.

  4. Change the brine.

  5. Let the walnuts soak for another six days.

  6. Drain the walnuts.

Pickle and store

  1. Prepare a pickle with vinegar, pepper, pimento, ginger, mace, cloves, mustard seed, and horseradish.

  2. Boil the pickle.

  3. Let the pickle cool.

  4. Add the walnuts to the pickle.

  5. Cover 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. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Garlic + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  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

Walnuts
Are the main ingredient being cured and pickled, giving the dish its body and flavor.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the walnuts and seasons them during the long brine soak.
White wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the walnuts and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, slightly bitter flavor that complements the sharp vinegar pickle.

The step that matters

Changing the brine and keeping the walnuts submerged. The salt brine must be strong enough to cure the walnuts and draw out bitterness, so a weak or diluted brine can let spoilage start. Replacing the brine midway keeps the salt concentration effective during the second soak.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, white wine, vinegar, mustard, garlic, pepper, ginger):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, white wine, vinegar, mustard, garlic, 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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