Diego Granado in “Libro del arte de cocina” apparently mentions nogada as a sauce for stuffed cabbage. How related is this to the stuffed chillie version?

In Mexico, there’s a sharp distinction made between nuez pacana (pecan) and nuez de castilla (walnut). The former is native to Mexico and is sometimes criollo, just like people born in Mexico but of Spanish ancestry. The nogada sauce is never made with pecans. These turn up in chile-based sauces, at least to judge by the cooking of my neighbors.

Nuez de castilla (Castilian nut), sometimes called nuez de nogal (nut of the walnut tree) is at least in high end cooking invariably the nut used for chiles en nogada. It must be young and it must be peeled (which you can only do when it is young, anyway) to make this sauce. I realize according to Ricardo Muñoz that these are ground with water or milk or fresh cheese not crema.

As to the fish recipes, here’s an interesting quote from the Nuevo Cocinero Mexicano (1888). “It is said that walnuts (nueces but defined as del nogal) taken after fish, speed up its digestion.”

The same source says that old walnuts are terrible for digestion and should be preserved with aguadiente or sugar while still young.

The Ruperto de Nola’s “Libre del Coch”gives several fish recipe that have a walnut (plus other nuts) thickened sauce. These recipes look like a picada, so I can see how the description above was applied.

I haven’t tried walnut with yoghurt, but one of the nicest ways of eating buckwheat blini and smoked salmon is with a sour creme and walnut sauce with beetroot.