Skip to main content
Drink

Another Good Receipt for Walnut Catsup

A walnut-based condiment made with eschalots, garlic, salt, vinegar, anchovies, pepper, cloves, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Another Good Receipt for Walnut Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Bruise the walnuts in a large marble mortar until broken.

  2. Place the walnuts in a stone jar with the eschalots, garlic, salt, and vinegar.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 10 days, stirring it morning and night.

Boil and bottle

  1. Strain off the liquid and boil it for 30 minutes with anchovies, black pepper, cloves, and mace.

  2. Skim the liquid well, strain it again, and let it cool.

  3. Pour the liquid into small dry bottles, leaving sediment behind.

  4. Seal the bottles with corks and store in a dry place.

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. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Garlic + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Green walnuts
Provide the bulk flavour and the dark, astringent character of the ketchup.
Vinegar
Acts as the solvent and preserving medium, extracting flavour from the nuts and aiding keeping.
Anchovies
Add savoury depth and umami that rounds out the sharp vinegar.
Eschalots
Contribute sharp allium flavour that mellows during steeping.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the nuts and vegetables and helps preserve the mixture.
Whole black pepper
Adds warm, pungent spice that gives the ketchup its background heat.

The step that matters

Skim and strain after boiling. Boiling releases proteins and fine particles that cloud the liquid and settle as sediment. Skimming and straining again removes them, so the bottled ketchup stays clear and keeps better.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, garlic, vinegar, pepper, clove. 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.

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes