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Walnut Ketchup

A fermented walnut-based condiment made with vinegar, spices, and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Bruise the walnuts thoroughly.

  2. Mix the walnuts with the salt and wine vinegar; stir daily for 14 days.

  3. Strain and squeeze the mixture through a cloth and set aside.

Steep the husks

  1. Add ½ pint of vinegar to the husks and let stand overnight.

  2. Strain and squeeze the husks, adding the liquid to the reserved mixture.

Spice and bottle

  1. Add the black pepper, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, and mace to the mixture.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes, then strain off the spices.

  3. Bottle the liquid 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. 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. Nutmeg + macetop 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. Pepper + clovetop 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 main flavour base, releasing their juices and pigments into the vinegar during steeping.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the walnuts and preserves the mixture during the long steep.
Wine vinegar
Acts as the main liquid and preservative, extracting flavour from the walnuts and adding acidity.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat and aroma to the finished liquid.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice notes that carry through the boiled liquid.

The step that matters

Boiling with the spices. Boiling for the full 30 minutes extracts the aromatic oils from the spices, and straining them out afterward keeps the finished liquid clear and stops it becoming bitter or over-spiced.

Swap the walnut

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

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

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