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To Make Walnut Catsup

A walnut-based condiment made by pickling walnuts, adding vinegar, cloves, mace, and boiled garlic, then pressing and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Mary Randolph · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,368 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

To Make Walnut Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Gather the walnuts as for pickling, and keep them in salt and water at the same time.

  2. Pound the walnuts in a marble mortar.

  3. For every dozen walnuts, add a quart of vinegar.

  4. Stir the mixture well every day for a week.

Press and season

  1. After a week, put the mixture in a bag and press all the liquor through.

  2. To each quart of the pressed liquid, add a teaspoonful of pounded cloves and one of mace.

  3. Add six cloves of garlic and boil the mixture for fifteen or twenty minutes.

  4. Bottle the resulting catsup.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

10Calories
0 gProtein
0 gFat
2 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 2 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Vinegar1 tbsp (15ml) distilled3

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Mary Randolph. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Garlic + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Clove + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts (in the method)
Provide the main flavour base of the catsup, releasing their oils and tannins into the vinegar as they steep.
Vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid and extracts flavour from the pounded walnuts over the week.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma, which mellows during the boil.

The step that matters

Stirring the mixture daily for a week. Regular stirring keeps the walnut solids evenly exposed to the vinegar, so flavour extracts uniformly rather than settling unevenly at the bottom of the container.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (garlic, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Corianderfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, vinegar. 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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