Skip to main content
Main

Walnxtt Ketchup

A preserved condiment made from walnut juice, anchovies, spices, and shallots, aged for at least a year.

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 ↓

Walnxtt Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ketchup

  1. Boil the walnut juice gently and skim it well.

  2. Add anchovies, clove, shallots, mace, pepper, and garlic.

  3. Boil until the shallots sink.

  4. Cool the mixture in a pan.

Bottle and age

  1. Bottle it, dividing the spices equally among the bottles.

  2. Cork the bottles tightly and cover the corks with bladder.

  3. Let it sit for at least one year 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. 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. Clove + shallottop 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

Expressed walnut juice
Forms the liquid base that the other ingredients are simmered and aged in.
Anchovies
Adds savoury depth as they break down during the long boil and aging.
Shallots
Contribute aromatic sweetness and body to the simmered liquid.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows during the long aging period.
Clove
Adds warm aromatic spice that preserves its character through long storage.

The step that matters

Cork the bottles tightly. A tight seal limits contact with air during the long year of aging, which helps keep the ketchup from spoiling and preserves its flavour.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, clove, shallot, 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes