Technology for the production of walnut oil - "Sharlan"

(Written down by Totyu Dechkov Beyalov, Born in 1891, in the village of Shipka)

  1. Cracking and hulling of nuts

  2. Baking - The oven is partitioned diagonally into two parts. The place, where the fire is stirred, occupies one third of the oven. When the oven is heated enough, the craftsman spreads the nuts in its other half and nurses the fire again. He stirs the nuts continuously with a shovel and twirls them in a semicircle by the fire. When a nut becomes yellow it's ready for grinding.

  3. Grinding - It is done between two mill - stones, driven by a horse. Sixty-seventy kilograms of nuts have to be ground for 1 "nibet" /dose/ of oil.

  4. Boiling -10l. water, 1-2kg sea-salt and 15k yeast of walnut oil are put in the cauldron for the production of one dose. After boiling up, the ground mash is added. The master stirs it without a break and watches until it turns. Water helps extracting the oil. If there's sufficient quantity water, the oil comes out on top and the mash remains at the bottom. The boiling continues for another 1h. The walnut oil has to be yellow in colour. Then the fire is taken out of the little oven in order the oil to cool down.

  5. Pressing - The paste is put in buckets and brought to the wooden press, where it is emptied into burlap, set in a cut stone. The worker wraps the burlap up in four sides, puts the cover and tightens the wooden screw. The oil flows in a copper, placed in a stone trough. The oil-cake left after pressing is called "kyuspe" in Bulgarian.

  6. Maturing - The ready oil is kept in big earthenware vessels, built in the ground, in order to maintain equal temperature.

The whole procedure takes 10-12 hours. In strong pressing 1k pure oil is extracted from 3k nuts. In 1928 Mr. Beyalov replaced the horse in its workshop with a dieselengine.