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Walnut Ketchup

A preserved condiment made from green walnuts, anchovies, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Walnut Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Pound the green walnuts or green peel in a mortar with coarse sea salt.

  2. Squeeze out the juice and pour it off clear.

  3. Boil the juice.

Make the ketchup

  1. For every quart of juice, add ½ pound of anchovies, ½ pint of vinegar, shallots, whole pepper, mace, and cloves.

  2. Boil together until the anchovies dissolve.

  3. Strain the mixture and cork it tightly when cool.

Age

  1. Let it stand for at least six months.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Walnut + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Walnut + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Green walnuts or green peel
Supplies the juice that forms the dark, strongly flavoured base of the ketchup.
Anchovies
Dissolve into the liquid to add deep savoury, salty flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.
Shallots
Add aromatic, savoury onion-like flavour to the liquid.

The step that matters

Boil together until the anchovies dissolve. The anchovies must fully break down into the hot liquid so their salty, savoury flavour spreads evenly. Stopping early leaves whole fish pieces and an uneven, weaker seasoning.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, vinegar, shallot, pepper, clove):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, vinegar, shallot, pepper, clove. 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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