—1826—WalnutsAn Excellent Family Medicine

#30

Everybody eats walnuts; everybody knows how to make a pickle of walnuts. Few, however, know the medicinal virtue of walnuts. Now, the fact is, walnuts, when prepared, secundum artem, are an excellent opening medicine and alterative; and this is the way to prepare them: 

Get the green walnuts, fit for pickling, put them in a stone jar, filled up with moist sugar, at the proportion of about half a pound of sugar to the score of walnuts; place the jar in a saucepan of boiling water, for about three hours, taking care the water does not get in, and keep it simmering during the operation. The sugar, when dissolved, should cover the walnuts; if it does not, add more. Cover it close, and in six months it will be fit for use. 

The older it gets, the better it is. One walnut is a dose for a child six years of age, as a purgative; and it has this great advantage over drugs, that, whilst it is an excellent medicine, it is, at the same time, very pleasant to the palate, and will be esteemed by young folks a great treat. 

Who can say as much of salts and jalap, and other doctor stuff? And, in a large family, it will abridge the doctor’s bill ten pounds a year.
[Thomas’s]

Pickled green walnut in the foreground with a mature walnut behind it

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Geo Watkins Pickled Walnuts: Pickled walnuts are an English condiment used to add zest to meats and cold cuts. Choice young Italian walnuts are salted and steeped in a marinade of malt vinegar, sugar, and salt.

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"Everybody knows how to make a pickle of walnuts."  

Well, maybe in the Agrarian Nation of 1824 they did, but I dare say almost nobody these days knows how to pickle walnuts. Personally, I never even knew green walnuts could be pickled.

If you would like to better understand the process of making pickled walnuts, I recommend this blog page (with pictures): Pickled Green Walnuts

And once you understand what pickled green walnuts are all about, then you can employ what you've learned in today's old excerpt to make "An Excellent Family Medicine" of sugared green walnuts. 

Modern medicine will, of course, disregard such old-fashioned homemade alterative and purgative medicines as foolishness and quackery. After all, the best medicines are developed by scientists, manufactured in factories, and bought in stores..... right?  

This sugared walnut recipe sounds like something akin green walnut liqueur, a gastronomic delicacy made in France and Italy. This web site provides some insights: Making Green Walnut Liqueur

Green Walnuts Ready For Picking

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