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Sauce

Walnut Catsup

A walnut sauce made with vinegar, beer, garlic, nutmeg, cloves, pepper, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Walnut Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

  1. Pound the young walnuts in a mortar, adding the coarse sea salt as you go.

  2. Pour in the strong vinegar and let the mixture sit until the walnuts turn black, stirring three to four times a day.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add the strong old beer and boil the mixture for 10 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture and let it sit overnight to settle.

  3. Pour off the clear liquid from the sediment and add the bruised garlic, nutmeg, cloves, black pepper, and mace.

  4. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes, then bottle and cork the catsup 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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + macetop 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 flavour base and dark colour as they steep and darken in the vinegar.
Strong vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid and adds sharp acidity that extracts flavour from the walnuts.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the walnuts and helps preserve the mixture.
Strong old beer
Adds body and malty depth to the liquid before it is boiled.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that carries through the boiled and bottled liquid.

The step that matters

Letting the walnuts turn black in the vinegar. The walnuts must steep long enough to darken and release their flavour and colour into the vinegar. Stirring several times a day keeps the walnuts evenly in contact with the acid, so the mixture extracts consistently rather than unevenly.

Swap the mace

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

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

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