Skip to main content
Main

To Pickle Walnuts

A pickled walnut recipe using brine and vinegar with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Gather walnuts while they are still soft enough to be pierced with a pin.

  2. Make brine with 6 ounces of coarse sea salt dissolved in 1 quart of water, removing any scum that rises to the surface as the salt dissolves.

  3. Add walnuts to the brine and stir them twice daily, changing the brine every three days.

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

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

Make the pickle

  1. 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.

  2. 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. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  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
Main ingredient that is pickled and darkens to black when exposed to air.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and flavour from the walnuts in the brine.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent flavour that infuses into the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Exposing the walnuts to air until they turn black. Walnuts darken as their exposed surfaces oxidise, and this colour change signals the pickling is ready. Stopping too early leaves them pale, while leaving them too long can dry them out.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, vinegar, pepper, ginger, mace, clove, mustard):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, vinegar, pepper, ginger, mace, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes