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Dessert

Walnuts, Preserved

Preserved walnuts flavored with sugar and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Walnuts, Preserved

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Soak the walnuts in cold water for a week, changing the water daily.

  2. Boil the walnuts gently until a wooden skewer passes through easily.

  3. Mix ground cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and grated lemon peel on a plate. Drain the walnuts on a sieve and insert the spice mixture into the holes of each walnut.

Preserve and store

  1. Layer the walnuts and sugar in a deep earthen vessel, cover, and let sit for 36 hours. Drain off the juice, boil it, then add the walnuts and simmer for 20 minutes or until needed.

  2. Store the walnuts like other jams.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Green walnuts
Form the preserve's main body; boiling softens their firm, bitter flesh for the skewer test.
Sugar
Draws out moisture and forms a syrup that preserves the walnuts and sweetens them.

The step that matters

Boiling until a skewer passes easily. Boiling gently softens the walnut flesh so the spices can be inserted and the syrup can penetrate. Undercooked walnuts stay firm and tough, while over-boiling can break them apart.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Fennelfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon. 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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