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To Pickle Walnuts

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,053 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

To Pickle Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the walnuts

  1. When walnuts can be pierced with a pin, prepare a brine with salt and water strong enough to float an egg.

  2. Boil and cool the brine.

  3. Soak the walnuts in the brine for six days, skimming while boiling.

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

  5. Drain the walnuts.

Pickle and store

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

  2. Seal the jar tightly.

  3. Let the jar rest for six months before eating.

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 + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Garlic + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 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
Form the pickled body; they soften in brine and absorb the spiced vinegar flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the walnuts and seasons them during the brining stage.
White wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the walnuts and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour that mellows as the pickle matures.
Garlic or shallot
Adds sharp aromatic flavour that infuses into the vinegar and walnuts.
Horseradish
Adds pungency and heat that carries into the vinegar over the resting period.

The step that matters

Soak the walnuts in brine for six days, then change the brine. The salt draws water out of the walnuts and seasons them. Skimming the boiling brine removes impurities, and replacing the brine keeps the salt strong enough to preserve the walnuts through the long soak.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, white wine, vinegar, mustard, garlic, pepper, ginger. 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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