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Sauce

Walnut Ketchup

A fermented walnut ketchup made with vinegar, salt, spices, anchovies, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Walnut Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Steep the walnuts

  1. Procure the walnuts.

  2. Bruise the walnuts slightly with a pin.

  3. Put the walnuts into a container with the salt and vinegar.

  4. Let them sit for 8 days, stirring every day.

  5. Strain the liquid.

Boil and bottle

  1. Boil the liquid with the other ingredients for about 1 hour.

  2. Strain the liquid again or leave it as is.

  3. Add more vinegar or port wine if desired.

  4. Bottle the ketchup and seal the corks.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Provide the bulk of the flavour and body, releasing their oils and tannins into the liquid.
Vinegar
Acts as the preserving and extracting liquid, adding sharp acidity that keeps the ketchup stable.
Anchovies
Add a deep savoury, umami note that rounds out the sauce.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and fruity depth that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Boiling the liquid with the spices for about 1 hour. Boiling extracts aromatic compounds from the spices and concentrates the liquid. Too short a boil leaves the flavour flat, while overboiling can make the spices bitter and dull the aroma.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, walnut, nutmeg, clove, ginger, pepper, horseradish. 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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