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Walnuts

A preserved walnut recipe using vinegar, salt, pepper, ginger, mustard, garlic tops, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prick the walnuts well with a pin.

  2. In a jar, combine the walnuts, black pepper, ginger, mustard, garlic tops, and horseradish.

  3. Fill the jar with cold vinegar and add the coarse sea salt.

Store and age

  1. Cover the jar tightly with two layers of leather.

  2. As the vinegar evaporates, refill the jar with more vinegar.

  3. Let the walnuts stand for a year 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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Garlic + horseradishtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together719 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 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
Young green walnuts are the main ingredient, softening and absorbing the pickling liquid over time.
Cold vinegar
Acidic liquid that preserves the walnuts and carries their flavour into the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out and helps preserve the walnuts during the long steep.
Horseradish
Adds sharp pungency that mellows and flavours the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Keeping the walnuts submerged as the vinegar evaporates. Vinegar slowly evaporates through the covering over the long steep. Refilling with more vinegar keeps the walnuts fully covered, which helps prevent spoilage and mould at the surface.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, ginger, mustard, garlic, horseradish, vinegar. 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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