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Pickled Walnuts

Pickled walnuts preserved in a brine and vinegar mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Pickled Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Select walnuts with soft outer shells that can be pricked with a needle.

  2. Make a strong brine with salt and water, boil it, and skim off the froth.

  3. Pour the brine over the walnuts and let them soak for eight days.

  4. Make a fresh brine and soak the walnuts for another eight days.

Pickle

  1. Drain the walnuts, then boil the vinegar, cloves, mustard seed, and pepper together.

  2. Pour the cooled mixture over the walnuts in glass jars.

Store

  1. Store for eight months 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Walnut + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
The main ingredient, which soaks up the brine and vinegar flavors over the long soak.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that flavors the pickle and helps preserve the walnuts.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice to the pickling liquid.
Mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavor to the pickling liquid.
Pepper
Adds sharp, spicy bite to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Selecting walnuts with soft shells. Walnuts with soft outer shells let the brine and vinegar penetrate and flavor the nut. Hard shells block the liquid, so the pickle turns out uneven.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, clove, mustard, pepper. 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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