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To Pickle Walnuts

A method for pickling walnuts with salt, spices, and vinegar.

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

To Pickle Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Soak the walnuts in salt and water for 2 days.

  2. Change the water and soak for another 2 days.

  3. Change the water again and soak for 3 more days.

Pickle

  1. Transfer the walnuts to a pickling jar.

  2. Add the onion, mustard seeds, mace, black pepper, allspice, bay leaves, and horseradish.

  3. Fill the jar and pour boiling vinegar over the walnuts.

  4. Cover with a plate and let cool.

  5. Once cool, seal with a bladder and leather.

  6. The walnuts will be ready to eat in 2 to 3 months.

  7. If any remain the next year, boil the vinegar, skim it, and pour it over the walnuts.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Allspice + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Main ingredient that softens during salt soaking and takes on the pickling flavours.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture and bitterness out of the walnuts during the repeated salt soaks.
Boiling vinegar
Acidic liquid that preserves the walnuts and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Mustard seeds
Add pungent, sharp flavour that mellows as the walnuts pickle.

The step that matters

Changing the soaking water on schedule. Repeated fresh salt soaks slowly draw out the walnuts' bitter tannins and moisture. Skipping or shortening a soak leaves the nuts bitter and less firm, so the schedule matters more than the exact salt amount.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, onion, clove, mustard, pepper, allspice, horseradish):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, onion, clove, mustard, pepper, allspice, horseradish. 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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