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Walnut Pickle
The walnuts must be quite green and tender. First soak them in fresh water, then rub off with a coarse towel. The walnuts must be kept in brine a week, and then soaked in clear water for several hours. Boil them in vinegar a little while-this time put water in the vinegar; then put them in good strong vinegar, a portion of which must be boiled and poured over them four successive mornings. Season with cinnamon, mace, cloves, and add two pounds sugar to one gallon vinegar, or in proportion to quantity of pickle.--Mrs. C. C.
Walnut Pickle.
Gather the nuts about the 10th or 20th of June, when they are sufficiently tender to be pierced with a pin; pour boiling salt water on, and let them be covered with it nine days, changing it every third day. Put them on dishes to air, until they are black; then soak out the salt, and put them in weak vinegar for a day or two; put into the jar and pour on hot the following pickled vinegar: 7 ounces ginger. 7 ounces of garlic. 7 ounces of salt. 7 ounces of horseradish. 1/2 ounce red pepper. 1/2 ounce of orange peel. 1/2 ounce of mace. 1/2 ounce of cloves, all boiled in 1 gallon strong vinegar. 1 ounce black pepper also.--Mrs. J. H. F.
Walnut Pickle.
Put the walnuts in salt water for five or six weeks; then in fresh water for twenty-four hours; boil in weak vinegar and water until soft enough to run a straw through. Then rub them with a coarse towel; make a strong liquor of vinegar, horseradish, garlic, and mace; pour on, and leave them till ready for use, in two or three weeks.--Mrs. T.
Three contributors' versions of the same preserve, all built on the same principle: unripe walnuts, still soft enough to pierce, are drawn of their bitterness in salt, then held in spiced vinegar. The three sets of directions differ mainly in how long the salting runs, from one week to six.
- The hinge: catch the nuts before the shell setsThe pin test in the second version is the whole recipe. Push a pin or fine skewer through the nut lengthwise; if it meets any grit or resistance in the center, the shell has begun to lignify and no amount of brining will fix it. In much of the mid-Atlantic that window falls in June, but it moves with the season and the species, so test rather than trust the date.
- Which walnutAn 1870s Virginia kitchen might have used either the native black walnut or English (Persian) walnut. Black walnuts have a thicker, more resinous husk and may need the longer salting; English walnuts are milder and are what modern pickled-walnut recipes assume.
- Tannin stains everythingGreen walnut juice is a dye that was used as one. Wear nitrile gloves and work on a surface you do not mind marking; the stain on skin takes a week or more to wear off.
- The brine strength is not givenNone of the three versions states how much salt. A common rule of thumb for pickling brine was enough salt to float a fresh egg, though none of these recipes says so. Use enough to keep the nuts submerged, weight them down, and change it as directed rather than leaving one batch standing.
- Vinegar acidity"Good strong vinegar" is set against the recipe's own "weak vinegar," and most likely means full-strength, undiluted vinegar. Use cider or malt vinegar labeled 5 percent acidity or higher, and do not dilute it beyond the deliberate weak-vinegar boiling step.
- Non-reactive equipment onlyLong contact between vinegar and tannin will pit aluminum, cast iron and unlined copper, and will pick up a metallic taste. Boil the spiced vinegar in stainless or enamel, and pack into glass with plastic-lined or all-glass lids.
- Airing until blackThe second version's instruction to spread the drained nuts on dishes until they blacken is oxidation, not spoilage, and it is what gives pickled walnuts their color. A day or two in the air, turned once, is usual; keep them covered from insects.
- Spice weights are for volumeSpice weights are for a crock-sized batch -- Seven ounces each of ginger, garlic, salt and horseradish to a gallon of vinegar is a large, aggressive pickling liquor meant for a crock. Scale everything down proportionally if you are making a jar or two.
- Timing and keepingReckon on several weeks from picking to the table; the third version's "two or three weeks" in the finished liquor is a minimum, and the flavor improves over several months. Store in a cool dark place and refrigerate once opened.
Pickled green walnuts are an English preserve of long standing, brought to the Virginia table along with walnut ketchup, mushroom ketchup and the other sharp, dark condiments that were served with cold beef, game and cheese. The technique exists because an unripe walnut is intensely tannic and bitter: repeated salting and soaking leaches that out, and the spiced vinegar then does the preserving. That Housekeeping in Old Virginia prints three versions side by side, each signed only with initials, shows how the book was assembled -- Marion Cabell Tyree gathered contributions from many Virginia housekeepers and set them down as received, disagreements and all, so a reader could choose between a one-week salting and a six-week one. The seasonings of the second version, heavy with ginger, garlic and horseradish, point to the Anglo-Indian taste for pungent bottled relishes that ran through nineteenth-century cookery on both sides of the Atlantic.