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To Pickle Walnuts

A preserved walnut dish pickled in a brine of salt, water, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Pickle Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brine

  1. Boil salt and water until strong, then let it cool and skim off any foam.

  2. Soak the walnuts in the cooled brine until they are tender.

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

Pickle

  1. Mix white wine vinegar with a good quantity of pepper, pimento, ginger, cloves, mustard seed, and horseradish.

  2. Pour the mixture over the walnuts in the 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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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 (in the method)
Their firm flesh softens in the brine and takes on the pickling flavours.
Salt
Draws moisture out of the walnuts and seasons them during brining.
White wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the walnuts and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Mustard seed
Adds a pungent, sharp flavour that infuses into the pickling liquid.
Horseradish
Adds a hot, pungent bite that mellows as the walnuts sit.

The step that matters

Skim the brine after boiling. Foam that is left in the brine can spoil the walnuts during soaking, so it must be removed as the brine cools.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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