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Pickles, Vinegar, &C

Pickled walnuts prepared with vine leaves, water, white wine vinegar, and mutton fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,776 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Pickles, Vinegar, &C

Ingredients

Directions

Blanch and peel

  1. Place vine leaves at the bottom of a pan and add walnuts, covering them with more vine leaves. Set the pan over a slow fire until the skins peel off.

  2. Remove the walnuts using a hair sieve. Peel the walnuts with a penknife.

  3. Return the peeled walnuts to the pot with vine leaves and water, cover, and cook over a slow fire until they turn a fine green.

  4. Drain the walnuts on a hair sieve. Let the walnuts cool.

Pickle and store

  1. Submerge the walnuts in boiled white wine vinegar. Top the walnuts with a little mutton fat.

  2. Seal the walnuts with bladder and paper. Store the walnuts in a dry place.

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. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Walnut + vinegartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Walnut + white winetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together246 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Walnut + muttontop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  5. Vinegar + muttontop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together615 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

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

What each ingredient does

French walnuts
Form the main body of the pickle; their skins are removed before pickling.
Vine leaves
Line the pan so the walnuts cook gently and evenly without scorching.
White wine vinegar
Acidity that preserves the walnuts and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Mutton fat
Forms a fat layer on top that helps seal the walnuts from air.

The step that matters

Cooking the peeled walnuts until they turn green. Slow cooking with vine leaves and water sets the colour gradually; too much heat can toughen or blacken the walnuts before the green develops.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Peasfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Kidney beansfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, vinegar, mutton. 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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