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To Pickle Walnuts

A method for pickling walnuts with mustard seed, mace, black pepper, allspice, bay leaves, horseradish, vinegar, onion, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

To Pickle Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Select large, full-grown walnuts before they harden.

  2. Soak walnuts in a mixture of salt and water for 2 days.

  3. Change the water and soak for another 2 days.

  4. Change the water again and soak for 3 more days.

  5. Remove walnuts from water and place them in a pickling jar.

Pickle

  1. When the jar is half full, add the onion with cloves.

  2. Add mustard seed, mace, black pepper, allspice, bay leaves, and horseradish.

  3. Fill the jar with boiling vinegar.

  4. Cover the jar with a bladder and leather.

  5. Let the walnuts pickle for 2 to 3 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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Allspice + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Main ingredient that becomes dark and firm as it soaks and pickles in the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acid that preserves the walnuts and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy flavour.
Mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent heat and aroma to the pickling liquid.
Horseradish
Contributes pungent, sharp heat that mellows during the long pickling period.

The step that matters

Soaking the walnuts in salt water. The walnuts must soak through all three salt-water changes, which draw out bitterness and tannin. Cutting this short leaves the pickle harsh and bitter.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, mustard, pepper, allspice, horseradish, vinegar, onion):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, mustard, pepper, allspice, horseradish, vinegar, onion. 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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