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Walnuts Prepared for Dessert
Crack the upper half of the shells of the required quantity of walnuts, and remove them carefully without damaging the kernel. Dip the exposed half of the nut into boiling water to facilitate peeling off the skin. Place each nut, as soon as peeled, in slightly acid water, which should also be cold and salted. When ready to serve, drain the nuts on a cloth. For dishing the nuts a pasteboard stand should be made with raised graduated tiers, and covered with green paper. Arrange the walnuts on this, using some moss to keep the nuts in position.
This is a service technique rather than a cooked dish: half-shelled walnuts, skinned, held in acidulated water, and presented on a tiered stand. Two things decide whether it works — the age of the nuts and how quickly you get them into the holding water.
- Use fresh-crop walnutsThe tannic skin comes away most readily from nuts of the current harvest, still slightly moist inside. Older storage nuts have skins that cling more tightly and kernels that are likelier to break up. Look for late-autumn "wet" or new-season walnuts.
- Crack the top half onlyThe recipe leaves the lower shell intact, which serves as a cup so the peeled kernel can be lifted without being handled. Work with a nutcracker eased shut slowly, or tap the seam with the back of a knife, rather than crushing.
- Boiling water is a dip, not a blanchThe recipe calls only for dipping the exposed half to loosen the pellicle, so keep the contact brief. Left longer, the kernel takes on water, goes soft, and loses the snap that makes it worth serving this way.
- The acid water is the hingePeeled walnut flesh discolours quickly once exposed. "Slightly acid water, cold and salted" points to ice water with a squeeze of lemon or a splash of white vinegar and a pinch of salt; the recipe gives no proportions. Each nut goes in the instant it is skinned.
- Drain thoroughly and serve at onceBlot on a cloth rather than paper, and dish immediately. Held wet they turn limp; held dry and exposed they discolour. This is a last-minute job, not something to do in the morning.
- The stand"Pasteboard" is stiff card. The modern equivalent is a tiered cake stand or a card cone covered in paper. Use food-safe paper or a doily where the nuts sit, and treat florist moss as decoration only — keep it off the kernels.
- QuantityThe recipe gives none. Reckon three or four prepared nuts per person at the end of a meal, and allow for some breakage while cracking.
Nuts closed the meal in nineteenth-century service, brought in with the fruit and the dessert wine, and a good deal of ingenuity went into presenting them well. What is described here is the fancy version of dessert walnuts: peeled of their bitter pellicle so they taste sweet and mild rather than tannic, but left sitting in the lower half of their own shell so the diner is reminded that the nut arrived whole. The tiered pasteboard stand covered in green paper and dressed with moss has the look of the period, when hotel dining rooms are often said to have competed in table display. The technique leans on the walnut harvest — freshly gathered English walnuts, still damp, will surrender their skins after a moment in hot water, which is likely why this appears as a seasonal flourish rather than a standing item.