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To Pickle Walnuts

A pickle of walnuts soaked in brine and then preserved in a vinegar mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

To Pickle Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the walnuts

  1. Prepare a brine with enough coarse sea salt and water to float an egg.

  2. Boil the brine, skimming it while boiling.

  3. Cool the brine.

  4. Soak the walnuts in the brine for six days.

  5. Change the brine and let the walnuts soak for another six days.

  6. Drain the walnuts.

Make the pickle and jar

  1. Prepare a pickle by combining white wine vinegar, black pepper, pimento, ginger, mace, cloves, mustard seed, and horseradish, and boil it.

  2. Cool the pickle.

  3. Pour the pickle over the walnuts in a jar.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 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

Walnuts
Are the main food being preserved, softening and darkening as they cure and pickle.
White wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the walnuts and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the walnuts during the brine cure, firming them and seasoning them.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour that is absorbed into the walnuts during pickling.

The step that matters

Cooling the brine before soaking the walnuts. Pouring in a hot brine would partly cook the walnut surface and can cause uneven curing. Cooling it first lets the salt work gently and evenly through the nuts.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, white wine, vinegar, pepper, ginger, clove, 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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