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Sauce

Walnut Catsup

A walnut-based condiment made by soaking, mashing, and simmering walnuts with vinegar and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper 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

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Soak the walnuts in saltwater for 8 days.

  2. Remove and mash the walnuts well.

Make the ketchup

  1. Mix the mashed walnuts with 1 quart of vinegar and let it sit for 8 to 10 days, stirring often.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Season with mace, cloves, and pepper.

  4. Boil for 20 minutes, then let it cool.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the catsup.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Provide the bulk and rich, earthy flavor of the ketchup once mashed.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps keep the ketchup stable.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the sauce.
Cloves
Adds a strong, warm aroma that flavors the sauce.

The step that matters

Letting the walnuts sit in vinegar for 8 to 10 days. The acid slowly draws flavor out of the mashed walnuts and softens them. Stirring often keeps the mash evenly exposed to the vinegar, so the flavor develops uniformly instead of unevenly across the batch.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, vinegar, 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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