Not much time to write tonight, but here is a recipe from Staindl that is so close to the earlier manuscript tradition we can assume direct transmission.
Preserved nuts
ccxliii) Take the nuts while they are still unripe (koßlig), about nine days before St. John’s Day (24 June) or just until St. Margaret’s Day (prob. 13 July then, today 20 July). Drill six holes into each nut crosswise and lay them in fresh water for twelve days. Drain them off often and pour on new water, but boil it first. After you have soaked them, lay them out on a clean board and dry them completely. Stick them with cloves, cinnamon, and ginger afterwards. Lay them into a glazed dish, boil honey, pour it on them, and leave them standing like that. But if you preserve them in sugar, boil them up once in clarified sugar and then let them stand a while in that.
This is an interesting recipe, and variations of it are not uncommon. Unripe walnuts could be pickled in an acidic environment (producing ‘black walnuts’ which are still made commercially) or, as here, in honey. A very similar recipe is found in the Heidelberg Cod Pal Germ 551 manuscript:
30 Pickled nuts
If you would make pickled nuts, take the nuts eight days before solstice (subenden) and take an awl. Poke five holes into each nut and let them lie in water for eight days. Then peel them (put them) in wine and boil them a little. Then let them rest for a day. Then boil them in honey. Take them out again and stick them with cloves, ginger, and cinnamon. Then take a pure honey and make it boil and prepare it with good ginger spice (ginger and other spice?). Lay the nuts in it and keep it in a small vat or a glazed pot.
There are some differences here – the more generous timeframe in Staindl, the different number of holes, the parboiling in wine and honey, and clearer definition of spices – but the structure and phrasing is close enough to suggest a fairly close relationship. The intended result clearly is the same: unripe nuts studded with spices and suffused with honey, preserved for the winter. I have not yet tried this, but if I have time in June this year, I may (I say that every year).
Balthasar Staindl’s 1547 Kuenstlichs und nutzlichs Kochbuch is a very interesting source and one of the earliest printed German cookbooks, predated only by the Kuchenmaistrey (1485) and a translation of Platina (1530). It was also first printed in Augsburg, though the author is identified as coming from Dillingen where he probably worked as a cook. I’m still in the process of trying to find out more.