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Walnut Catsup

A sauce made from walnuts, anchovies, shallots, pepper, cloves, mace, and optional vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Walnut Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Pound the young walnuts in a mortar.

  2. If using vinegar, drain the pickled walnuts after a year.

  3. If not using vinegar, express the juice of the walnuts.

Make the catsup

  1. If using vinegar, boil the vinegar with additional spices and shallots for a few minutes.

  2. If not using vinegar, boil the expressed juice with anchovies, shallots, black pepper, cloves, and mace for 1 hour.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Walnut + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 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

Young walnuts
Provide the main body and bitter, earthy flavour of the catsup.
Fine anchovies
Add deep savoury, salty flavour that rounds out the sauce.
Eschalots (shallots)
Add mild sharpness and aromatic sweetness to the sauce.
Black pepper
Adds warm, pungent spice that balances the richness.

The step that matters

Boiling the expressed juice for 1 hour. Long simmering concentrates the liquid and mellows the raw flavours of the walnuts, shallots and spices into a unified, shelf-stable sauce. Stopping early leaves it thin and harsh-tasting.

Swap the mace

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

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

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