Why it works: Walnut and red wine work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 125 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓
Walnut Ketchup Foe Fish Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Make the sauce
Combine walnut pickle, anchovies, and red wine in a pot.
Bring to a boil and reduce until the mixture is one third of its original volume.
Strain the mixture and let it cool.
Bottle
Pour the cooled sauce into small bottles and seal them tightly with corks.
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.
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Walnut + red winetop 22% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together125 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
- Walnut pickle
- Provides the main savory, concentrated flavor base of the sauce.
- Anchovies
- Add deep savory umami that becomes richer as the mixture reduces.
- Red wine
- Adds acidity and body, and its liquid is reduced to concentrate the sauce.
The step that matters
Reducing the mixture to one third. Boiling evaporates water and concentrates the flavors and salt, so the sauce becomes intensely savory. Reducing too little leaves it thin and weak; reducing too far can make it overly salty and sharp.
“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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