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Sauce

Walnut Catsup

A walnut-based sauce made by steeping walnuts, ginger, mace, and garlic, then boiling and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,402 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Walnut Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the walnuts

  1. Remove the green shells from the walnuts.

  2. Layer the shelved walnuts in a deep pan.

  3. Sprinkle each layer with coarse sea salt.

  4. Let the walnuts stand for a week.

  5. Stir the walnuts daily with a wooden spoon.

  6. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

Make the catsup

  1. Measure the liquid into a saucepan.

  2. Add ½ ounce of bruised ginger, ¼ ounce of mace, and a small piece of garlic to the liquid.

  3. Boil the mixture for 20 minutes.

  4. Set the mixture aside to cool.

  5. Bottle the cooled mixture for use.

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. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

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

  2. Walnut + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Ginger + macetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

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

  4. Walnut + garlictop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  5. Walnut + macetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together765 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

Green walnuts
Provide the main body and bitter, astringent flavour that defines the catsup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws liquid out of the walnuts and preserves the mixture during the week of standing.
Ginger
Adds warm, aromatic pungency to the liquid.
Mace
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour to the liquid.

The step that matters

Stirring the walnuts daily during the week of standing. Daily stirring keeps the salt evenly distributed and the walnuts submerged in their brine, so they ferment and extract liquid uniformly rather than spoiling on the exposed surface.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Corianderfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, ginger, 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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