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Sauce

Prince of Wales's Ketchup

A preserved ketchup made from elderberries, vinegar, spices, and anchovies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,677 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Prince of Wales's Ketchup

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the elderberries

  1. Strip the stalks from the elderberries and fill a jar with the fruit.

  2. Pour boiling vinegar over the elderberries until the jar is full.

  3. Place the jar in a cool oven and let it sit overnight.

Make the ketchup

  1. Strain the liquid into a pot.

  2. Add ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt, 1 blade of mace, 4 chopped shallots, 1 teaspoon of peppercorns, 12 cloves, and 2 ounces of boned anchovies to the liquid.

  3. Boil the mixture until the anchovies dissolve.

  4. Once cooled, strain the liquid again and bottle it for use.

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. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Vinegar + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + shallottop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe elderberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and the colour of the ketchup.
Boiling vinegar
Extracts flavour from the fruit and gives the ketchup its sharp acidity.
Shallots
Add a mild onion-like savoury base that rounds out the sauce.
Boned anchovies
Dissolve during boiling to add deep savoury, umami flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until the anchovies dissolve. The anchovies must break down fully into the liquid so their savoury flavour blends evenly. Boiling also concentrates the liquid and drives off harsh vinegar notes, so stopping too early leaves the sauce thin and sharp.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, shallot, 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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