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Walnut Ketchup

A preserved walnut ketchup made with walnut juice, red wine, anchovies, spices, and aged for three months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Walnut Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnut juice

  1. Crush half a bushel of green walnuts before the shell forms.

  2. Squeeze out the juice through a coarse cloth.

Make the ketchup

  1. In a pot, combine the walnut juice, red wine, anchovies, coarse sea salt, allspice, long pepper, cloves, mace, ginger, and horseradish.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reduces to half the quantity.

  3. Pour the liquid into a pan and let it cool.

Bottle and age

  1. Seal it up when cold and cork it tightly.

  2. Let it sit for about three months before using.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Green walnuts
Provide the main flavour base and the bitter, astringent character of the ketchup.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth, helping to balance and preserve the liquid.
Anchovies
Contribute savoury umami depth that rounds out the sauce.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the sauce and helps preserve it against spoilage.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the sauce.
Long pepper
Adds pungent, peppery heat and aroma.

The step that matters

Reducing the mixture by half. Boiling concentrates the flavours and drives off water, which helps the ketchup keep. Reducing too little leaves it thin and more prone to spoiling, while reducing too far can make it overly salty and intense.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, red wine, allspice, pepper, clove, ginger, horseradish):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, red wine, allspice, pepper, clove, ginger, horseradish. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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