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Pickled Walnuts

Pickled walnuts preserved in brine and spice infusion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Pickled Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Choose soft walnuts and pierce them with a darning needle to test.

  2. Dissolve 6 oz of coarse sea salt in 1 quart of boiling water to make brine. Let the brine cool.

  3. Cover the walnuts with the brine and let them stand for 6 days, stirring frequently.

  4. After 6 days, cover the walnuts with fresh brine and let them stand for another 6 days.

  5. Drain the walnuts and place them on a large dish in the sun until they turn black, which will take a few hours.

Make the pickle

  1. Boil together 1 quart of vinegar, 1 oz of whole ginger, 1 oz of black peppercorns, 2 blades of mace, 1 oz of mustard seed, and 4 cloves for 10 minutes. Let the mixture cool.

  2. Pour the cooled mixture over the walnuts with the spices, tie down closely, and keep for 3 months before using.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  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 body; the brining and sun-drying turn them dark and firm.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the walnuts and seasons them during the brine soaks.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the walnuts and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Black peppercorns
Add a sharp, pungent aroma to the pickling liquid.
Whole ginger
Adds warm, aromatic spice to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Testing and brining the walnuts. Only soft, young walnuts with a pierceable shell will pickle well; hard shells resist the brine and spice. Two full brine soaks draw out bitterness and water so the nuts can take on the vinegar flavour.

Swap the mace

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

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

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