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Sauce

Walnut Catsup

A walnut-based sauce made with anchovies, eschalots, spices, and 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

  1. Pound the young walnuts in a mortar.

Make the ketchup

  1. Boil the expressed juice of the walnuts for 1 hour with the anchovies, eschalots, black pepper, cloves, and mace.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Add vinegar to taste.

  4. Boil for a few minutes with additional spices if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Young walnuts
Provide the juice that forms the base of the ketchup.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth to the sauce.
Eschalots
Contribute aromatic flavour as they cook down in the liquid.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.

The step that matters

Boil the walnut juice for 1 hour with the spices. Long boiling concentrates the liquid and softens the eschalots and anchovies, blending their flavours. Boiling too briefly leaves the sauce thin and the flavours raw and separate.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, 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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