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Preserved Green Walnuts

A pickle of green walnuts preserved with spices, vinegar, and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Preserved Green Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Prick the walnuts with a pin and soak them in cold water for 2 hours.

  2. Strain the water off the walnuts, pour fresh water over them, and soak for 4 days, changing the water daily.

  3. Lay the walnuts on a mat or sieve to dry and blacken, turning occasionally.

Pack and pickle

  1. In a jar, layer half the walnuts, then add the onion stuck with cloves, and top with the remaining walnuts.

  2. Boil the spices in vinegar and pour it over the walnuts while hot.

  3. Cover the walnuts with the spice and keep the jar covered with a plate until the pickle cools.

  4. Once cold, tie the jar with bladder wetted with vinegar and cover with chamois leather.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  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

Green walnuts
Their unripe flesh softens and darkens during soaking and drying, becoming the body of the pickle.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the walnuts and carries the flavour of the boiled spices into the fruit.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that stands up to the vinegar and mellows the pickle.

The step that matters

Soaking the walnuts for 4 days in changed water. The long soak draws out the bitter, astringent compounds in the green husks. Changing the water keeps the leaching going, so skipping or shortening it leaves the pickle harsh and bitter.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, onion, clove, pepper, 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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