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Compound, or Cook’s Catsup

A homemade catsup made by simmering mushroom catsup with eschalots, adding walnut catsup and cayenne vinegar, then boiling and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 763 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Compound, or Cook’s Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Simmer the mushroom catsup with the eschalots for 5 minutes.

  2. Add the walnut catsup and cayenne vinegar.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil, then pour it out.

  4. Once cooled, bottle the catsup with the eschalots inside.

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. Mushroom + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Mushroom + vinegartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Walnut + vinegartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushroom catsup
Provides the base flavour, with concentrated savoury umami depth.
Eschalots
Add a mild aromatic onion flavour as they simmer in the catsup.
Walnut catsup
Adds a rich, slightly bitter nutty depth to the savoury base.
Cayenne vinegar or chili vinegar
Adds acidity and heat, sharpening the flavour and helping preserve the catsup.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, vinegar):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Soybeanfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, vinegar. 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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