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Walnut Ketchup

A sauce made from young walnuts, anchovies, shallots, cloves, ginger, mace, pepper, and garlic, simmered and bottled.

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

Prepare the juice

  1. Press out the juice from the young walnuts and let it simmer.

  2. Skim the juice well.

Simmer with the spices

  1. Add anchovies, shallots, cloves, ginger, mace, pepper, and garlic.

  2. Simmer until the shallots sink.

Bottle and seal

  1. Pour into a pan and let it cool.

  2. Bottle the mixture, dividing the spices.

  3. Cork tightly and tie down with a bladder.

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. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Walnut + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Young walnuts
Their juice forms the liquid base of the ketchup.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savory depth that rounds out the flavor.
Shallots
Contribute aromatic sweetness and body as they soften during simmering.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows with long simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer until the shallots sink. Long simmering concentrates the liquid and softens the shallots and spices so their flavors blend. Stopping too early leaves the ketchup thin and harsh, while over-reducing can make it too thick.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, shallot, clove, ginger, 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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