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Sauce

Walnut Catsup

A fermented walnut sauce seasoned with ginger, allspice, long pepper, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Walnut Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Sprinkle walnuts with salt, using ½ pound for 100 walnuts. Let them sit for 6 days, mashing them frequently.

  2. After 6-7 days, press the walnuts and pile them to one side of a tub or pan to drain the liquid.

  3. Continue mashing and moving the walnuts until no more liquid flows.

Make the ketchup

  1. Simmer the liquid in a clean pot until scum rises.

  2. Add ginger, allspice, long pepper, and cloves to the liquid. Boil slowly for 30 minutes.

  3. Once cool, bottle the mixture, dividing the spices among the bottles.

Seal and age

  1. Fill the bottles completely, cork tightly, and seal with bottle cement.

  2. Store the bottles on their side in a cool, dry place for one year before using.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Green walnuts
Provide the base liquid and the bulk of the flavour when salted and drained.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the walnuts, creating the liquid and preserving the mixture.
Ginger
Adds warm, pungent aroma to the spiced liquid.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes that round out the flavour.
Cloves
Adds strong aromatic spice that carries through the long storage.

The step that matters

Draining the walnuts until no more liquid flows. Salt draws water out of the walnuts slowly, and the liquid is the base of the ketchup. Stopping early leaves too little liquid, while the mashing and moving keeps the walnuts exposed so the salt can keep working on all of them evenly.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Cashew nutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, allspice, 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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