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To Pickle Walnuts

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger 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

  1. Gather walnuts when the sun is shining on them and before the shell hardens.

  2. Soak walnuts in a strong saltwater solution for nine days, stirring twice daily and changing the saltwater every three days.

  3. Place walnuts in a sieve to air dry until they turn black.

  4. Transfer walnuts to stone jars and pour boiling vinegar over them, then cover and let cool.

  5. Boil the vinegar three more times, allowing it to cool between each boiling.

  6. Add fresh vinegar to cover the walnuts, boiling it with pepper, cloves, ginger, mustard seed, and garlic.

  7. Pour the spiced vinegar over the walnuts and let them cool before sealing.

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. Clove + gingertop 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. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 (vinegar, pepper, clove, ginger, mustard, garlic):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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

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