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Sauce

Walnut Catchttp

A walnut-based sauce made with vinegar, spices, and sugar, steeped and boiled to create a condiment.

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 Catchttp

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Gather walnuts and break them into small pieces with a mallet.

  2. Combine walnuts, salt, and cider vinegar in a jar; let sit for three weeks.

  3. Strain the mixture through a colander and set the liquid aside.

Extract the liquid

  1. Pour 1 quart of vinegar over the walnut pieces and let sit for 24 hours.

  2. Mash the walnuts in the vinegar and strain through a cloth, pressing to extract liquid.

Cook and bottle

  1. Combine the strained liquid with black pepper, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, and sugar in a kettle.

  2. Boil for half an hour, then strain again and let cool before bottling and sealing.

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. Ginger + nutmegtop 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

Walnuts
Provide the main flavour and body of the sauce once steeped and strained.
Cider vinegar
Acts as the solvent and preservative, extracting walnut flavour and adding acidity.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and helps preserve the walnut mixture during its long steep.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Boil for half an hour, then strain again. Boiling the strained liquid with the spices extracts their aroma and gives the sauce a stable, shelf-safe result before bottling. Letting it cool fully before sealing prevents condensation and spoilage in the bottle.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Chestnutfits about as well
  2. Chickpeafits about as well
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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