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Sauce

Walnut Catsup

A walnut-based sauce made by mashing walnuts with salt, simmering the liquid, and adding spices, then bottling and aging.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Walnut Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnut liquid

  1. Sprinkle walnuts with salt and let them sit for six days, mashing them frequently.

  2. After six days, press the walnuts and pile them to one side of the container to drain the liquid.

  3. Continue mashing and pressing until no more liquid flows.

  4. Simmer the liquid in a clean pot until scum rises.

Spice and bottle

  1. Add ginger, allspice, long pepper, and cloves to the liquid and boil slowly for 30 minutes.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then bottle it, dividing the spices among the bottles.

  3. Fill the bottles completely, cork them tightly, and seal with bottle cement.

  4. Store the bottles on their side in a cool, dry place for 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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Green walnuts
Provide the bulk of the liquid and the dark, bitter flavour base of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws liquid out of the walnuts through osmosis and preserves the mixture against spoilage.
Ginger
Adds warm, pungent aroma that rounds out the sharp notes of the walnut liquid.
Cloves
Contribute strong aromatic compounds that flavour the liquid during the slow boil.

The step that matters

Continue mashing and pressing until no more liquid flows. Salt draws moisture out of the walnuts over time, and leftover liquid left in the pulp would dilute the ketchup and weaken its preservation.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Cashew nutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, allspice, pepper, 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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