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Walnut Catsup

A preserved walnut condiment made with vinegar, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Walnut Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Prick each walnut in three or four places.

  2. In a jar, layer the walnuts with salt and enough water to cover them.

  3. Leave for two weeks, pounding daily with a wooden mallet.

  4. Strain the liquid into a preserving kettle.

Make the ketchup

  1. Cover the nuts with boiling vinegar and pound thoroughly.

  2. Strain this liquid into the previous one.

  3. For every quart of liquid, add ginger, black pepper, cloves, mace, minced onion, grated horseradish, and cayenne.

  4. Boil for one hour, then cool.

Bottle and rest

  1. Bottle and seal.

  2. Let sit for two months before using.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Young walnuts
Provide the main flavour base and sharp, tannic character as they steep in brine.
Coarse sea salt
Draws liquid from the walnuts and helps preserve the mixture during the long steep.
Boiling vinegar
Extracts flavour from the nuts and acts as the preservative, adding acidity.
Ground cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes that deepen during the long rest.

The step that matters

Boil for one hour, then cool. Boiling the spiced liquid concentrates and blends the flavours and helps the ketchup keep well. Cooling before bottling avoids sealing in steam and heat, which could weaken the seal.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, vinegar, ginger, pepper, clove, onion, 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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