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Walnut Catsup

A condiment made from black walnuts, vinegar, garlic or onions, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,592 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Walnut Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pierce the black walnuts with a pin and mash them.

  2. Combine the mashed walnuts with 1 gallon of vinegar.

Make the ketchup

  1. Boil the mixture down to 3 quarts and strain it.

  2. Add garlic or onions, spices, and salt to taste.

  3. Let the mixture cool and then bottle it using good 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. Walnut + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Walnut + vinegartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Black walnuts
Provide the main flavor and body of the ketchup once simmered and strained.
Vinegar
Acts as the liquid base and preserving acid, extracting flavor from the walnuts during boiling.
Garlic or onions
Add pungent aromatic depth to the finished ketchup.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture down. Reducing the walnut and vinegar mixture concentrates flavor and thickens the liquid. Boiling it down far enough matters because the acidity and concentration help the ketchup keep well once bottled.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, clove):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, clove. 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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