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To Piclcle Walnuts

Walnuts preserved in a brine and vinegar mixture with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 Piclcle Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the walnuts

  1. Prepare a brine with salt and water, boil it, and cool it until it is strong enough to float an egg.

  2. Skim the brine while it is boiling, then soak the walnuts in it for six days.

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

Pickle and store

  1. Drain the walnuts and pour over them a mixture of white wine vinegar, pepper, pimento, ginger, mace, cloves, mustard seed, and horseradish, all boiled together and cooled.

  2. For every 100 walnuts, add 6 teaspoons of mustard seed and 2–3 heads of garlic or shallot.

  3. Seal the jar tightly; the walnuts will be ready to eat in six months and 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. 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 main body of the pickle, absorbing the brine and vinegar flavours as they cure.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the walnuts during the brine soak, firming them and seasoning them.
White wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the pickle its sharp, preserving character.
Mustard seed
Adds a pungent, sharp flavour that stands up to the long pickling period.

The step that matters

Checking the brine strength. The brine must be strong enough to float an egg so the walnuts are properly salted and cured. A weak brine may not preserve them, and the walnuts can spoil or turn soft during the long soak.

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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