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Sauce

Walnut Ketchup

A condiment made from young walnuts, vinegar, salt, anchovies, shallots, horseradish, spices, and port, simmered and bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Walnut Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Select very young and tender walnuts.

  2. Bruise the walnuts slightly and place them in a jar with salt and vinegar.

  3. Let them sit for 8 days, stirring daily.

Make the ketchup

  1. Drain the liquid into a saucepan and add the remaining ingredients.

  2. Simmer gently for about 40 minutes.

  3. When cool, strain the mixture into small bottles.

Store

  1. Cork, seal, and store in a cool, 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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 flavour and dark colour of the ketchup as they steep in vinegar.
Vinegar
Extracts flavour from the walnuts and gives the ketchup its sharp acidity and preservative effect.
Anchovies
Add deep savoury, umami flavour that rounds out the sauce.
Shallots
Contribute savoury, aromatic sweetness that softens during simmering.
Port
Adds sweetness and a rich, fruity depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for about 40 minutes. Simmering gently concentrates the flavours and mellows the sharp vinegar without boiling hard, which can make the sauce bitter or cloudy and drive off aromatics unevenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, vinegar, shallot, horseradish, nutmeg, ginger, clove):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, vinegar, shallot, horseradish, nutmeg, ginger, 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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