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To Pickle Walnuts

This recipe preserves walnuts in a brine and vinegar mixture, then dries them.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

  1. Gather walnuts while they can be easily pierced with a pin.

  2. Make brine with 6 ounces of salt per gallon of water and remove any scum.

  3. Add walnuts to the brine and stir them twice daily.

  4. Change the brine every three days.

  5. For immediate eating, leave walnuts in brine for 12 days; otherwise, drain after 9 days.

Blacken and pickle

  1. Spread drained walnuts on dishes and expose to air until they turn black, about 12 hours.

  2. Prepare the pickle with ½ gallon of vinegar, 1 teaspoon salt, 2 ounces black pepper, 3 ounces bruised ginger, 1 teaspoon mace, ¼ to ½ ounce cloves (some stuck into small onions), and 4 ounces mustard seed.

  3. Boil the mixture.

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
Are the main ingredient, softened and darkened by the brine and air exposure.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the walnuts and preserves them during brining.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle liquid.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent flavour that mellows as the pickle matures.

The step that matters

Changing the brine every three days. Fresh brine keeps the walnuts from spoiling and maintains the salt concentration needed to draw out moisture and preserve them over the long brining period.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, 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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