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To Pickle Walnuts

Walnuts pickled in a brine and vinegar mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,053 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

To Pickle Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the walnuts

  1. Boil water with salt until strong enough to float an egg.

  2. Let the brine cool.

  3. Skim off any foam from the brine.

  4. Soak walnuts in the brine for 6 days.

  5. Change the brine.

  6. Soak walnuts for another 6 days.

  7. Drain the walnuts.

Pickle and store

  1. Place the walnuts in a jar.

  2. Boil white wine vinegar with pepper, pimento, ginger, mace, cloves, mustard seed, and horseradish.

  3. Let the vinegar mixture cool.

  4. Pour the cooled vinegar mixture over the walnuts, ensuring they are well covered.

  5. Seal the jar tightly.

  6. Store the jar. (They will be ready to eat in 6 months.)

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Garlic + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  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
Main ingredient that softens and absorbs the brine and vinegar flavours during soaking.
White wine vinegar
Acidic liquid that preserves the walnuts and gives them their sharp, tangy flavour.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour that infuses into the vinegar during pickling.

The step that matters

Pour the cooled vinegar mixture over the walnuts. The vinegar must be cooled before it touches the walnuts, because hot liquid would soften and cook them unevenly. The walnuts must also stay fully submerged, since any exposed pieces can spoil and grow mould during storage.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, white wine, vinegar, mustard, garlic, pepper, ginger. 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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