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Sauce

Compound, or Cook’s Catsup

A sauce made from mushroom catsup, eschalots, walnut catsup, and cayenne vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 763 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Compound, or Cook’s Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer and combine

  1. Simmer the mushroom catsup with the eschalots for 5 minutes.

  2. Add the walnut catsup and cayenne vinegar.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil, then pour it out.

Cool and bottle

  1. Let it cool, then bottle it with the eschalots.

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. Mushroom + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Mushroom + vinegartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Walnut + vinegartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushroom catsup
Forms the savoury base, providing deep, umami-rich flavour.
Walnut catsup
Adds a rich, dark, savoury depth to the sauce.
Eschalots
Simmering softens them and releases mild, sweet aromatic flavour into the liquid.
Cayenne vinegar or chili vinegar
Adds acidity for sharpness and heat, and helps keep the finished sauce stable.

The step that matters

Letting it cool before bottling. After boiling, the mixture is very hot. Letting it cool fully before bottling prevents steam and condensation from building up inside the bottle, which can affect the sauce's keeping quality.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Soybeanfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, 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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