Skip to main content
Drink

Walnut Ketchup

A walnut-based ketchup made with anchovies, shallots, cloves, ginger, mace, pepper, and garlic, aged for at least a year.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Walnut Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ketchup

  1. Press out the juice from the young walnuts and let it simmer.

  2. Skim the juice well, then add anchovies, shallots, cloves, ginger, mace, pepper, and garlic.

  3. Simmer the mixture until the shallots sink.

  4. Pour the mixture into a pan and let it cool.

Bottle and age

  1. Bottle the ketchup, dividing the spices evenly.

  2. Cork tightly and tie down with a bladder.

  3. Let it age for at least 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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Walnut + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Young walnuts juice
Forms the liquid base that carries all the other flavours.
Anchovies
Adds deep savoury umami flavour that rounds out the sauce.
Shallots
Contribute aromatic flavour and body as they soften during simmering.
Cloves
Add warm, pungent aroma that persists through long ageing.
Ginger
Adds sharp, warm aromatic notes to the sauce.

The step that matters

Skimming the juice before adding the other ingredients. Skimming removes foam and impurities that rise during simmering. Leaving them in can cloud the liquid and give it off flavours, and a clearer base keeps the finished ketchup clean-tasting over its long ageing.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, shallot, clove, ginger, 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

Ginger PopGinger Pop22 recipesGinger WineGinger Wine12 recipesGinger BeerGinger Beer11 recipesGinger TeaGinger Tea9 recipes