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Walnut Ketchup

A preserved walnut condiment made with vinegar, anchovies, wine, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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

Steep the walnuts

  1. Place walnuts in jars and cover them with cold strong vinegar.

  2. Seal the jars tightly and let them sit for a year.

  3. After a year, remove the walnuts.

Make the ketchup

  1. For every gallon of liquid, add 2 heads of garlic, ½ pound of anchovies, 1 quart of red wine, and 1 ounce each of mace, cloves, long black pepper, Jamaica pepper, and ginger.

  2. Boil the mixture until the liquid reduces by half.

  3. Let it cool, then bottle it for 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 + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Garlic + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Give the base its characteristic flavour as they steep in the vinegar over a long period.
Cold strong vinegar
Acts as the sharp, preserving liquid that extracts flavour from the walnuts.
Anchovies
Add a deep, savoury saltiness that rounds out the sauce.
Red wine
Adds body and additional acidity and depth to the liquid.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture until it reduces by half. Boiling concentrates the flavours and evaporates water, so the ketchup becomes thicker and more stable for storage. Reducing too little leaves it thin and more prone to spoiling, while over-reducing can make it overly intense.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, vinegar, garlic, red wine, clove, pepper, ginger. 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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