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Pickled Walnuts

A pickled walnut recipe using vinegar, spices, and mustard seed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Walnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Rub the walnuts well with a coarse towel and soak them in saltwater strong enough to float an egg for two weeks.

  2. Drain the walnuts and place them in a kettle with enough fresh water to cover them.

  3. Let them sit for twelve hours, keeping them hot but not boiling.

Make the spiced vinegar

  1. Break the ginger and nutmeg into pieces and bruise the pepper slightly.

  2. Add the spices to the vinegar just before it boils.

  3. Boil the vinegar with spices for five minutes, then pour it out and let it cool completely.

Pickle and seal

  1. Place the walnuts in jars, sprinkle with the pounded mustard seed, and pour the spiced vinegar over them.

  2. Cover the jars tightly.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 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
Are the main food being pickled, absorbing the flavour of the spiced vinegar over time.
Vinegar
Acts as the pickling liquid, preserving the walnuts and carrying the spice flavours.
Mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavour to the pickling liquid and jars.
Ginger
Adds warm, aromatic pungency that flavours the vinegar.

The step that matters

Soaking the walnuts in saltwater. Salt brine draws out bitter tannins and moisture from the walnut skins, so the nuts stay firm and take on the pickle flavour rather than tasting harsh.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

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