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Walnut Ketchup

A condiment made by boiling walnut juice with anchovies, cloves, shallots, mace, pepper, and garlic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ketchup

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

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

  3. Boil until the shallots sink.

  4. Remove the liquid from heat and let it cool.

Bottle and seal

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

  2. Cork the bottles tightly and seal with bladder over the corks.

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 carries all the other flavours.
Anchovies
Add savoury depth and a salty, umami character as they break down in the liquid.
Shallots
Contribute aromatic sweetness and body to the liquid as they soften.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows during boiling.

The step that matters

Boil until the shallots sink. Boiling drives off excess water and softens the shallots so they release their flavour into the liquid. Stopping too early leaves the mixture thin and under-flavoured, while overboiling can make it dark and bitter.

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.

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