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To Pickle Walnuts

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Pickle Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

  1. When the walnuts can be pierced with a pin, prepare a brine with water and coarse sea salt boiled until strong enough to float an egg. Let it cool completely.

  2. Skim the brine while boiling. Soak the walnuts in the brine for six days.

  3. Change the brine and let the walnuts soak for another six days.

  4. Drain the walnuts and prepare a pickle with white wine vinegar, black pepper, allspice, ginger, mace, cloves, mustard seeds, and horseradish, all boiled together and cooled.

  5. Pour the cooled pickle over the walnuts in a jar.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Walnutthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Chickpeafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, vinegar, pepper, allspice, ginger, mace, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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