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To Make Walnut Catsup

A walnut-based ketchup made with anchovies, peppers, spices, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Make Walnut Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnut juice

  1. Crush young walnuts in a tub or pound them in a mortar.

  2. Squeeze out the juice through a coarse cloth.

Make the ketchup

  1. Combine the juice with anchovies, coarse sea salt, Jamaica peppers, long peppers, mace, cloves, sliced ginger, shallots, brown sugar, and vinegar.

  2. Simmer the mixture together for 2 hours.

  3. Let it cool.

  4. Bottle and cork it well.

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 bulk and the juice that forms the base of the ketchup.
Anchovies
Add a deep, savoury background flavour that rounds out the sauce.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and salt.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the mixture and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Simmer the mixture together for 2 hours. A long, gentle simmer lets the flavours of the spices and aromatics blend and mellows the sharp vinegar. Too vigorous a boil can reduce the liquid unevenly and scorch the sugar on the base of the pan.

Swap the mace

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

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

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