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To Pickle Walnuts

This recipe preserves walnuts in a spiced brine and vinegar, producing pickled walnuts after six months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Gather walnuts in mid-July and place them in a pot with salt and water.

  2. Boil the walnuts until the outer skin can be rubbed off.

  3. Rub the walnuts with a cloth to remove the skin.

  4. Soak the walnuts in cold salt water for 2–3 days, changing the water daily.

Brine

  1. Prepare a brine with boiled water and salt, strong enough to float an egg, and let it cool.

  2. Soak the walnuts in the brine for 6 days.

  3. Change the brine and soak the walnuts for another 6 days.

Pickle and jar

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

  2. Boil the vinegar with spices and pour the hot vinegar over the walnuts in the jar.

  3. Seal the jar tightly; they will be ready to eat in 6 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 + 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
Form the pickled food itself, absorbing the brine flavour and firming as they cure.
White wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the walnuts and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and helps cure the walnuts while removing their bitterness.
Mustard seeds
Add a sharp, pungent aroma and bite to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Soaking in brine. Brine strength matters: it must be strong enough to float an egg, or the walnuts may spoil. Changing the brine removes salt-drawn bitterness and stale liquid, so the curing stays safe and clean-tasting.

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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