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Sauce

Walnut Ketchup

A fermented walnut sauce made with pickled walnuts, salt, spices, and shallots, boiled and bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg 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 Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Beat the walnuts very small in a marble mortar.

  2. Add the salt and mix well in a clean earthen pan.

  3. Stir the mixture two or three times a day for 10 to 14 days.

  4. Strain the mixture through a cloth, pressing it dry.

Season and bottle

  1. Boil the liquid with mace, cloves, sliced nutmeg, and whole pepper.

  2. When nearly done, add the shallots.

  3. Bottle and cork it closely.

  4. Shake the bottle before use.

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 + nutmegtop 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. Nutmeg + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Provide the main body and the dark, rich flavour of the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Draws liquid out of the walnuts and preserves the mixture during the long resting period.
Shallots
Add a sharp, savoury onion note to the finished liquid.

The step that matters

Stirring over 10 to 14 days. The salt must fully mix with the walnuts and be stirred regularly so the mixture ferments and cures evenly. Skipping stirring can leave pockets that spoil before the flavour develops.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, clove, nutmeg, pepper, shallot. 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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