Skip to main content
Sauce

Walnut Catsup

A walnut-based ketchup made with anchovies, shallots, cloves, mace, pepper, and garlic, boiled, cooled, bottled, and aged for up to twenty years.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Walnut Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ketchup

  1. Boil or simmer the walnut juice and skim it well.

  2. Add the anchovies, shallots, cloves, mace, pepper, and garlic.

  3. Simmer until the shallots sink.

  4. Cool the liquid in a pan.

Bottle and store

  1. Bottle the mixture, dividing the spices evenly.

  2. Cork the bottles tightly and tie a bladder over them.

  3. Store in a cool, dark place.

  4. It will keep for twenty years but is not ready for use until after the first year.

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 + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Walnut + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnut juice
Forms the liquid base that the other ingredients steep and simmer in.
Anchovies
Dissolve during long simmering to add a deep, savory background flavor.
Shallots
Soften and break down while simmering, adding sweetness and body to the liquid.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice that carries through the long keeping period.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note that deepens the flavor over time.
Pepper
Adds sharp, pungent spice that gives the ketchup its bite.

The step that matters

Skimming the walnut juice. Simmering brings impurities and foam to the surface of the juice. Skimming them off before adding other ingredients keeps the finished ketchup clear and prevents off flavors from developing during storage.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, shallot, clove, pepper, garlic. 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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes