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Another Good Receipt for Walnut Catsup

A walnut-based ketchup made by crushing walnuts, steeping with aromatics, and simmering with anchovies and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

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

  3. Let the mixture stand for 10 days.

  4. Stir the mixture morning and night.

Make the ketchup

  1. Strain the liquid.

  2. Boil the strained liquid for 30 minutes with anchovies, black pepper, cloves, and mace.

  3. Skim the mixture.

  4. Strain it again.

  5. Let it cool.

Bottle and store

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

  2. Cork the bottles securely.

  3. Store them 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 main flavour and dark colour as they steep in the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid and extracts flavour from the walnuts and spices.
Anchovies
Add savoury depth, adding umami to the finished sauce.
Eschalots
Add sharp aromatic flavour that softens during the long steep.

The step that matters

Leave sediment behind when bottling. Sediment from the steeped solids can cloud the ketchup and cause spoilage if it is poured into the bottles. Straining and letting the liquid settle keeps the bottled product clear and stable.

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.

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