Skip to main content
Main

Walnut Ketchup

A fermented walnut-based condiment made by boiling walnut shells with water, salt, and spices.

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 Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnut liquor

  1. Place the walnut shells in a pan with the water and a large amount of salt. Let them sit for 10 days.

  2. Break the shells in the water and drain through a sieve, using a heavy weight to extract the juice.

  3. Bring the liquid to a boil, skimming off any scum that forms.

Season and bottle

  1. Add the shallots, cloves, mace, pepper, and garlic, and simmer until the shallots sink.

  2. Remove from heat, let cool, then bottle and cork tightly.

  3. Allow to stand for 6 months before using. If it ferments, boil and skim again.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Coarse sea salt
Draws juice out of the shells and helps preserve the liquid against spoilage.
Shallots
Add savory aromatic flavor and body to the simmered liquid.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savory depth to the finished sauce.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavor to the ketchup.
Mace
Adds a warm, nutmeg-like aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling and skimming the liquid. Boiling the strained liquid and skimming off scum removes proteins and impurities that would otherwise cloud the sauce or encourage fermentation, which is why the record calls for boiling and skimming again if it ferments.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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

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