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Walnut Ketchup

A fermented walnut shell ketchup made with water, salt, shallots, cloves, mace, pepper, and garlic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 liquid

  1. Place walnut shells in a pan with water and a large quantity of salt; let stand for 10 days.

  2. Break up the shells in the water and drain through a sieve, pressing down with a heavy weight to extract the juice.

  3. Place the liquid in a pot and remove any scum that forms.

Season and boil

  1. Boil the liquid with shallots, cloves, mace, pepper, and garlic until the shallots sink.

Bottle and age

  1. Transfer the liquid to a pan, let it cool, then bottle and cork tightly.

  2. Allow the liquid to stand for 6 months before using.

  3. If the liquid 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. Walnut + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnut shells
Provide the main flavour and dark colour of the ketchup as they steep in the brine.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out juice from the shells and preserves the liquid against spoilage.
Shallots
Add savoury, aromatic depth to the boiled liquid.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savoury flavour to the liquid.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice notes to the liquid.
Mace
Adds a warm, delicate aroma to the liquid.

The step that matters

Boiling and skimming the liquid. Boiling concentrates and seasons the liquid while skimming removes scum and proteins that can spoil it. Re-boiling and skimming if it ferments helps stop unwanted fermentation before the long rest, so the ketchup keeps its flavour and stability.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, 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.

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