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To Pickle Walnuts

A method for pickling walnuts in a brine and vinegar solution with spices.

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 ↓

To Pickle Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Prick over 100 walnuts.

  2. Soak them in a brine made of 6 oz. coarse sea salt and 2 quarts cold water.

  3. Change the brine every 3 days for 9 days, stirring the walnuts each time.

  4. Remove the walnuts, drain them, and expose them to the sun until they turn black.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. Boil 2 oz. black pepper, 3 oz. ginger, 3 oz. cloves, 2 oz. mustard seed, and a few blades of mace in 2 quarts vinegar for about 10 minutes.

Pickle and bottle

  1. Strain the mixture and pour it over the walnuts in glass bottles.

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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 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
Are the main pickled ingredient, softening and darkening as they cure in brine and sun.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the walnuts and seasons them during the long brine soak.
Vinegar
Acts as the pickling liquid, adding sharp acidity that preserves the walnuts.
Black pepper
Adds pungent heat and aroma to the spiced pickling liquid.
Ginger
Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the pickling liquid.
Cloves
Adds strong, sweet-spiced aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Changing the brine and sunning the walnuts. Fresh brine every 3 days keeps the salt strength steady so the walnuts cure evenly instead of spoiling. Sun exposure turns the skins black through oxidation of their natural tannins and phenolic compounds.

Swap the mace

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

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

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