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Sauce

Another Good Rbceipt for Walnut Catsup

A walnut-based sauce made with shallots, garlic, salt, vinegar, anchovies, pepper, cloves, and mace, then bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Another Good Rbceipt for Walnut Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts

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

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

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

Boil and strain

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

  2. Skim the mixture, strain it again, and let it cool.

Bottle and store

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

  2. Cork the bottles securely and store them in a dark 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. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Shallot + clovetop 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. 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

Green walnuts
Provide the main flavour base and bitter, tannin-rich character of the ketchup.
Vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid and extracts flavour from the walnuts and aromatics.
Anchovies
Add savoury depth, which mellows and blends into the background during boiling.
Shallots
Contribute sharp, savoury aromatic flavour that softens during the long steeping.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out and seasons the mixture while it stands and preserves it.

The step that matters

Stirring during the 10-day standing period. Regular stirring keeps the walnut pieces and aromatics in contact with the vinegar, so flavour extracts evenly rather than settling unevenly at the bottom of the jar.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, shallot, 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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