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Sauce

Walnut Catsup

A fermented walnut-based condiment made with walnut juice, vinegar, salt, bitter orange peel, garlic, mace, nutmeg, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Walnut Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ketchup base

  1. Combine the walnut juice and vinegar; let it stand for 4 days.

  2. Add the coarse sea salt and boil until reduced by half.

Infuse and bottle

  1. Tie the orange peel, garlic, mace, nutmeg, and cloves in a piece of muslin.

  2. Place the muslin bag in a jar and pour the boiling mixture over it.

  3. Cover the jar tightly and let it stand for 1 month.

  4. Strain the mixture and bottle it.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Walnut + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 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

Expressed walnut juice
Provides the main liquid and the characteristic dark, tannic flavour of the ketchup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the ketchup and sharpens its flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the ketchup and helps preserve it.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows during the long infusion.
Mace
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour to the infused liquid.
Nutmeg
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour to the infused liquid.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling mixture over the muslin bag. The hot liquid extracts flavour from the garlic, peel and spices into the vinegar. Pouring it over a sealed jar while hot helps the infusion proceed and keeps the contents sterile enough for the long standing period.

Swap the bitter orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, vinegar, garlic, mace, nutmeg, clove):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Bitter orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, vinegar, garlic, mace, nutmeg, 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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