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To Pickle Walnuts

A method for preserving walnuts by soaking and pickling them with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

To Pickle Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the walnuts

  1. Soak walnuts in salt and water for 2 days.

  2. Change to fresh water and soak for another 2 days.

  3. Change water again and soak for 3 days.

  4. Remove walnuts and place them in a pickling jar.

Pickle

  1. When the jar is half full, add the onion stuck with cloves.

  2. For every 100 walnuts, add mustard seed, mace, and black pepper.

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. Clove + mustardtop 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
Their soaking in brine softens and blackens them, forming the pickle's dark flesh and mellow texture.
Onion
Stuck with cloves, it adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth to the pickling liquid.
Mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent heat that balances the rich, mellow flavour of the walnuts.
Black pepper
Contributes warm, biting spice that gives the pickle its characteristic pungency.

The step that matters

Changing the soaking water. Each change of fresh water draws out bitterness and excess salt from the walnut husks. Skipping or shortening the soaks leaves the walnuts harsh and can encourage spoilage in the jar.

Swap the mace

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

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

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