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Preserve

To Pickle Walnuts

Green walnuts brined for twelve days, then stored in a jar under a spiced white wine vinegar pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Pickle Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the walnuts

  1. When walnuts can be pierced with a pin, prepare a brine of salt and water, boiled and cooled, strong enough to float an egg.

  2. Skim the brine while it boils.

  3. Let the walnuts soak in the brine for six days.

  4. Change the brine.

  5. Let the walnuts stand in the new brine for another six days.

Pickle and store

  1. Drain the walnuts and place them in a jar.

  2. Boil together white wine vinegar, pepper, pimento, ginger, mace, cloves, mustard seed, and horse-radish, then cool.

  3. Pour the cooled mixture over the walnuts.

  4. Seal the jar tightly.

  5. Keep the walnuts for six months until ready to eat; they can last for several years.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
The main ingredient, which softens and takes on the brine and pickling flavours over time.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the walnuts and seasons them through the brine.
White wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the walnuts and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour that deepens as the walnuts mature in the jar.

The step that matters

Changing the brine. Replacing the brine after six days refreshes the salt and removes the bitter, dark compounds the walnut hulls release, so the walnuts do not turn unpleasantly bitter or spoil.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, white wine, vinegar, pepper, ginger, clove, mustard. 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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