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Cockj/e Ketchup

A sauce made from cockles, water, spices, and optional brown or white sauce ingredients.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Cockj/e Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cockles

  1. Open the cockles and scald them in their own liquor.

  2. Add a little water if necessary and strain through a cloth.

  3. Season with savoury spices.

Make the sauce

  1. For brown sauce, add port, anchovies, and garlic.

  2. For white sauce, omit these and add sherry, lemon juice, lemon peel, mace, nutmeg, and white pepper.

  3. For brown sauce, burn a bit of sugar for coloring.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Garlic + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,893 recipes

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

  4. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Nutmeg + white peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cockles
Provide the main shellfish flavour and body of the ketchup.
Anchovies
Add a deep savoury, salty richness to the brown sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its savoury notes.
Sherry
Adds a fortified wine depth and aroma to the white sauce.

The step that matters

Burn a bit of sugar for coloring. Sugar caramelises when heated, and past the light amber stage it turns bitter and dark. Heating it gently and stopping at the right colour gives a rich brown tone without a burnt taste.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, garlic, sherry, lemon, mace, nutmeg, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, garlic, sherry, lemon, mace, nutmeg, sugar. 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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