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Pickled Walnuts

Pickled walnuts preserved in a vinegar brine with horseradish, ginger, garlic or shallots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Prepare

  1. Bruise the walnuts and layer them in a jar, sprinkling with coarse sea salt.

Pickle

  1. Boil the vinegar with horseradish and ginger.

  2. Pour the hot vinegar over the walnuts and cover tightly.

  3. Repeat boiling and pouring the vinegar over the walnuts for 3-4 days.

  4. Add garlic or shallots during the last boiling.

Mature

  1. Let the walnuts stand for 4-5 months before using.

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. Horseradish + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Horseradish + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together259 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Walnut + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Ginger + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 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
Provide the main body of the pickle, absorbing the vinegar flavour as they mature.
White wine vinegar
Acts as the acidic preserving liquid that softens and pickles the walnuts.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent heat that mellows during the long standing period.

The step that matters

Repeat boiling and pouring the vinegar. Reheating the vinegar each time keeps the liquid hot enough to extract flavour from the walnuts and helps the pickle stay well preserved. Skipping or rushing these repeats leaves the walnuts under-flavoured.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, vinegar, horseradish, ginger, clove. 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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