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Sauce

Walnut Catsup

A fermented walnut ketchup made with pickled walnuts, vinegar, tomato juice, spices, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the pickled walnuts.

Cook and strain

  1. In a pot, combine the walnuts, pickling vinegar, tomato juice and pulp, allspice, cloves, and chopped red pepper.

  2. Boil the mixture together.

  3. Strain through coarse cheesecloth, squeezing the bag to extract all liquid.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the catsup. It will keep for years.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Walnut + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Pickled walnuts
Provide the main body and distinctive flavor of the ketchup.
Pickling vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its tang and helps preserve it.
Tomato juice and pulp
Supplies liquid and body, giving the ketchup its tomato base.
Ground allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor.
Ground cloves
Adds strong, warm aroma and spice flavor.
Red pepper
Contributes sweetness and mild pepper flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture together. Boiling softens the walnuts and red pepper and lets the spices and acid blend into the liquid. Too little cooking leaves the flavors raw and the solids coarse, which makes straining harder and the texture uneven.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, tomato, allspice, clove, pepper. 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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