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Sauce

Walnut Catsup

A spicy walnut-based condiment made by soaking, boiling, and blending walnuts with spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Prick the walnuts and place them in a jar with enough water to cover and 1 cup of salt.

  2. Stir the mixture twice a day for 2 weeks.

  3. Drain the liquid into a kettle.

  4. Cover the walnuts with boiling vinegar.

  5. Mash the walnuts to a pulp.

  6. Strain the pulp through a colander into the kettle.

Season and cook

  1. For every quart of liquid, add 2 ounces each of white pepper and ginger, 1 ounce each of cloves and grated nutmeg, a pinch of cayenne, and 1 minced small onion.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of celery seed tied in muslin.

  3. Boil the mixture for 1 hour.

  4. Bottle the catsup when it is cold.

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. Ginger + clovetop 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. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Walnut + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Young walnuts are the base of the ketchup, providing the bulk of its body and flavour.
Sea salt
Salt draws liquid out of the walnuts during the long brine, softening them for pulping.
Vinegar
Boiling vinegar covers the walnuts and adds sharp acidity that preserves the ketchup.
White pepper
Adds sharp, warm heat that gives the ketchup its savoury bite.

The step that matters

Stir the brine twice a day for 2 weeks. Regular stirring keeps the walnuts evenly submerged in salt brine so they soften and ferment evenly rather than spoiling on the surface.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, vinegar, ginger, clove, nutmeg, onion, celery. 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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