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Walnut Catsup

A walnut-based ketchup made by boiling walnuts with vinegar, spices, and onions.

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 Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Pound the walnuts and let them stand in the hot sun for 2-3 days.

  2. Pour enough vinegar over the walnuts to cover them and bring to a boil.

  3. Strain out the pounded walnuts.

Season and bottle

  1. Add pepper, cloves, salt, onions, and a little more vinegar.

  2. Boil again, adding your preferred spices.

  3. After boiling, strain out the spices and bottle the catsup.

  4. Let it age for improved flavor.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Provide the main body and rich, nutty flavor of the ketchup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the ketchup.
Onion
Adds savory depth and aroma as it cooks into the sauce.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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