Skip to main content
Main

To Pickle Walnuts

A pickled walnut recipe using vinegar, spices, and anchovies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Gather walnuts in mid-July and place them in a pot with salt and water.

  2. Boil until the outer skin can be rubbed off.

  3. Rub off the skins with a cloth.

  4. Soak the walnuts in cold salt water for 2-3 days, changing the water daily.

Pickle

  1. Boil vinegar with spices.

  2. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the walnuts.

  3. Let the walnuts soak in the vinegar mixture for 6 days.

  4. Change the brine and let the walnuts sit for another 6 days.

  5. Drain the walnuts.

  6. Add the vinegar mixture with spices, ensuring the walnuts are well covered.

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
The main ingredient, which softens and takes on the flavour of the pickling liquid.
White-wine vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that preserves the walnuts and balances their richness.
Garlic or shallot
Adds a pungent, savoury aroma that carries into the pickling liquid.
Anchovies
Adds savoury depth to the pickle without making it taste distinctly fishy.
Cayenne
Adds gentle heat that rounds out the sharp vinegar.

The step that matters

Keeping the walnuts fully covered in the vinegar mixture. Walnuts left exposed to air can spoil or mould. Fully submerged in the acidic liquid, they are protected while they soften and flavour over the long soak.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, 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, 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.

You might also like

Horseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce23 recipesHorseradish ButterHorseradish Butter6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes