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Pickled Walnuts

Pickled walnuts soaked in brine and flavored with vinegar, spices, and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove 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 ↓

Pickled Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the walnuts

  1. Prepare a brine with 12 oz of salt dissolved in 2 quarts of water.

  2. Soak the walnuts in this brine for 9 to 12 days, changing the brine twice or more.

Make the pickle

  1. In a pot, combine the vinegar, black pepper, ginger, mace, cloves, onions, and mustard seed.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the walnuts in a stone jar.

  4. Allow it to cool completely.

  5. Once cooled, cover the jar securely and store it in a dry place.

  6. Ensure the walnuts are always covered with vinegar.

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

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

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Are the main ingredient, softened and darkened by the brine and vinegar over time.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the walnuts and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Sea salt
Draws water out of the walnuts and seasons them during the long brine soak.
Ginger
Adds warm, aromatic spice that flavours the pickling liquid.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Keeping the walnuts fully covered with vinegar. Walnuts exposed to air can spoil or mould. Vinegar's acidity inhibits microbial growth only where it contacts the nuts, so any uncovered portion is at risk.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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