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To Pickle Walnuts Black

This is a recipe for black pickled walnuts using vinegar, spices, mustard seed, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Pickle Walnuts Black

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Gather young, soft walnuts.

  2. Rub off the fur with a coarse cloth.

  3. Mix salt and water strong enough to float an egg.

  4. Soak walnuts for nine days, changing the water every two days and stirring frequently.

  5. Drain walnuts.

  6. Air them for ten minutes to help them blacken.

  7. Scald walnuts in boiling water briefly.

  8. Rub the scalded walnuts with a coarse cloth.

  9. Pierce each walnut several times with a large needle.

Make the pickle and jar

  1. Boil vinegar with cloves, allspice, black pepper, mace, and nutmeg for five to six minutes.

  2. Strain the hot vinegar.

  3. Pour the hot vinegar over the walnuts in stone jars.

  4. Tie mustard seed and horseradish in a thin muslin rag.

  5. Add the rag to the jars.

  6. Seal jars tightly with corks and leather.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Young, soft nuts are the main food that softens and darkens during the long brine and pickling.
Vinegar
Acts as the pickling liquid that preserves the walnuts and gives them their sharp, sour taste.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the walnuts and helps them blacken during the brine soak.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the hot pickling vinegar.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent note to the pickling liquid through the muslin bag.
Horseradish
Adds a hot, pungent bite to the pickling liquid through the muslin bag.

The step that matters

Soaking the walnuts in brine for nine days. Salt draws water out of the walnuts and slowly darkens them. Changing the water and stirring keeps the brine strong and even, so the nuts blacken without spoiling.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, vinegar, clove, allspice, pepper, nutmeg, 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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