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To Pickle Walnuts

A preserved walnut dish pickled in a seasoned brine and vinegar.

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

Brine the walnuts

  1. When walnuts can be pierced with a pin, prepare a brine of salt and water, boil it, and cool it until it is strong enough to float an egg.

  2. While the brine is boiling, skim it, then let the walnuts soak in it for six days.

  3. Change the brine and let the walnuts stand for another six days.

  4. Drain the walnuts and place them in a jar.

Pickle and store

  1. Pour over the walnuts a mixture of white wine vinegar, pepper, pimento, ginger, mace, cloves, mustard seed, and horseradish, all boiled together and cooled.

  2. Seal the jar tightly; the walnuts will be ready to eat in six months.

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
The main ingredient, which absorbs the brine and the spiced vinegar over the long pickling period.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the walnuts and seasons them while helping to keep spoilage in check.
White-wine vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the walnuts.
Mustard-seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that mellows during pickling.
Garlic or shallot
Adds a pungent aroma and savoury sharpness to the pickle.

The step that matters

Brine strength. Make the brine strong enough to float an egg and change it halfway. Salt draws water out of the walnuts and inhibits spoilage microbes, so a weak brine risks spoilage and a poorly kept pickle.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, 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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