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Sauce

Walnut Catsup

A fermented walnut sauce seasoned with salt, allspice, ginger, pepper, cloves, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 shells of the walnuts and bruise them slightly.

  2. Combine the walnuts and salt in a stone jar and let them ferment for 2-3 weeks.

Make the ketchup

  1. After fermentation, boil the mixture for 1 hour.

  2. Strain off the liquor and add allspice, ginger, black pepper, cloves, and mace.

  3. Let it cool, then bottle it and seal with a bladder over the cork.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnut liquor
Provides the main walnut flavour and the liquid base of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out liquid from the walnuts and helps preserve the mixture during fermentation.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the finished ketchup.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat and aroma to the finished ketchup.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, allspice, ginger, 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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