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Sauce

Walnut Catsup

A walnut-based sauce made with anchovies, shallots, spices, 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

  1. Pound the young walnuts in a mortar.

Make the ketchup

  1. To make without vinegar, boil the expressed juice of the walnuts with anchovies, shallots, black pepper, cloves, and mace for 1 hour.

  2. If using vinegar, drain the pickled walnuts after a year and boil the vinegar with additional spices and shallots for a few minutes.

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 ketchup.
Anchovies
Add savoury depth and umami that rounds out the sauce.
Shallots
Add a mild sharpness and aromatic base to the liquid.
Black pepper
Adds pungent heat and aroma that balances the walnut flavour.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice notes.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice with the anchovies and spices. Boiling for the full hour concentrates the liquid and extracts flavour from the spices and shallots. Stopping early leaves the ketchup thin and under-flavoured, while overboiling can make it too dark and strong.

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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