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Sauce

Walnut Catsup

A preserved walnut sauce made with vinegar, salt, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg 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 Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnut liquid

  1. Gather 120 green walnuts when a pin can pierce them.

  2. Combine walnuts with ¾ pound of coarse sea salt and 1 quart of good vinegar.

  3. Stir daily for 14 days.

  4. Strain and squeeze the liquid through a cloth and set aside.

  5. Add ½ pint of vinegar to the remaining walnuts and let stand overnight.

  6. Strain and squeeze again, combining this liquid with the previously set aside liquid.

Spice and bottle

  1. Add 1¼ ounces of whole pepper, 40 cloves, ½ ounce of sliced nutmeg, and ½ ounce of ginger.

  2. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes, covered.

  3. Strain the mixture, let it cool, and bottle it for use.

  4. Seal bottles with new corks and dip them in melted rosin.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 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

Green walnuts
Provide the main flavour and dark colour of the catsup as they steep in vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws liquid out of the walnuts and helps preserve the mixture during the long steep.
Vinegar
Extracts flavour from the walnuts and acts as the preserving liquid.
Whole pepper
Adds pungent spice and aroma to the liquid as it boils.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice to the liquid during boiling.

The step that matters

Strain and squeeze the walnut liquid. Squeezing the solids through a cloth extracts the most liquid and flavour, and leaving pulp behind keeps the finished catsup clear rather than gritty.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Cashew nutfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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