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Pickled Butter Nuts and Walnuts

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Butter Nuts and Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pick green nuts at the end of June.

  2. Make a brine strong enough to hold an egg and cover the nuts with it for 6 days.

  3. Wash off the brine and cover the nuts with boiling vinegar.

  4. Add 1 cup of brown sugar, 1 oz of cloves, 1 oz of cinnamon, 1 oz of mustard, and 1 ground nutmeg.

  5. Let the mixture stand for three days.

  6. Throw away the vinegar and prepare fresh vinegar in the same way, heating it to boiling point.

  7. Add 1 teacup of ground horseradish and 4 pounds of ginger root.

  8. Place the nuts in a stone jar and cover them with the vinegar.

  9. Repeat the process for 3 days, heating each time, then seal.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, vinegar, sugar, clove, cinnamon, mustard, nutmeg):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, sugar, clove, cinnamon, mustard, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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