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Walnut Ketchup

A fermented walnut condiment made with walnuts, shallots, garlic, vinegar, salt, anchovies, pepper, mace, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Walnut Ketchup

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Remove the gills from the walnuts by beating them in a large mortar until thoroughly broken.

  2. Place the broken walnuts in a jar with the shallots, garlic, vinegar, and salt.

  3. Let the mixture stand for two weeks, stirring twice a day.

Make the ketchup

  1. Strain off the liquid and pour it into a saucepan with the anchovies, black pepper, cloves, and mace.

  2. Boil the mixture, skimming off any foam.

  3. Strain it again and, when cool, pour it into small bottles, leaving sediment behind.

Bottle and store

  1. Cork the bottles tightly and store them in a dry place.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Green walnuts
Provide the main body and bitter, earthy flavour of the ketchup.
Vinegar
Acts as the solvent and preservative, extracting flavour from the walnuts and shallots.
Anchovies
Add a savoury, umami depth that rounds out the sauce.
Shallots
Contribute sharp aromatic flavour that mellows during the long steep.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that infuses into the vinegar during standing.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out liquid and helps preserve the mixture during the long standing.

The step that matters

Breaking the walnuts thoroughly. Crushing the walnuts well exposes their surfaces so the vinegar can extract flavour and colour evenly. Incompletely broken walnuts leave pockets of unextracted flavour and slow the steeping.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

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