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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) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and ginger work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 737 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Pickled Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the walnuts

  1. Make a brine by dissolving ½ pound of coarse sea salt in 1 quart of cold water.

  2. Prick the young walnuts with a knitting needle and submerge them in the brine.

  3. Let the walnuts sit in the brine for one week.

Dry and blacken

  1. Remove the walnuts, dry them, and place them on trays in the sun until they blacken (about two days).

Pickle and rest

  1. Combine 2 ounces of mixed pickling spice and ½ ounce of root ginger with 1 quart of vinegar and boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Place the walnuts in earthenware jars and pour the boiling vinegar and spices over them.

  3. Once cooled, cover the jars with bladder and let them sit for about one month 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. Walnut + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Ginger + vinegartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,126 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Walnut + vinegartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Young walnuts
Form the pickle itself; their green, unripe flesh softens and darkens during brining and pickling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the walnuts and preserves them during the week-long brine.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the walnuts and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Mixed pickling spice
Adds aromatic, warm flavour that infuses into the vinegar and the walnuts.
Root ginger
Adds a pungent, aromatic note to the spiced vinegar.

The step that matters

Brining the walnuts for one full week. Salt draws water out of the walnuts and helps stop spoilage; a shortened brine leaves more moisture and less protection, so the walnuts may soften or spoil later in the vinegar.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Soybeanfits better
  3. Peanutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, 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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