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Walnuts

A pickled walnut recipe with salt, spices, and vinegar, soaked and preserved for months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the walnuts

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

  2. Change to fresh water and soak for another 2 days.

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

Pickle

  1. Remove walnuts from water and place in a pickling jar.

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

  3. Fill the jar and pour boiling vinegar over the contents.

  4. Cover with a bladder and leather.

  5. Let sit for 2 to 3 months before eating.

  6. If any remain the next year, boil the vinegar, skim it, cool, and pour over walnuts.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Main ingredient that softens during the salt soaks and takes on the pickling flavours.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the walnuts and helps firm them during the soaking stage.
Boiling vinegar
Acidic liquid that preserves the walnuts and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour that deepens as the walnuts sit in the vinegar.

The step that matters

Changing the salt-water soak. The walnuts must soak through all three stages in fresh water to draw out bitterness and tannins. Skipping or shortening a change leaves the pickle harsh and bitter.

Swap the mace

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

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

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