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Walnut Catsup

A walnut-based condiment made with walnuts, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg 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

Pickle the walnuts

  1. Prick the walnuts in several places and place them in a jar with salt and enough water to cover.

  2. Break the walnuts with a wooden beater and let them sit in the pickle for two weeks, stirring twice a day.

Extract and cook

  1. Drain the liquid into a saucepan and cover the shells with boiling vinegar to extract remaining juice.

  2. Crush the shells to a pulp and strain through a colander into the saucepan.

  3. Add spices and boil the mixture for one hour if you have a gallon.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the catsup when cold, adding an equal quantity of spice to each bottle.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Nutmeg + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Their juice and pulp form the body and dark, savoury base of the ketchup.
Salt
Draws out liquid from the walnuts and preserves the pickle during the two-week rest.
Vinegar (in the method)
Extracts the remaining juice from the shells and adds acidity that helps preserve the ketchup.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic flavour that deepens the spiced character of the ketchup.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic flavour that deepens the spiced character of the ketchup.
Ginger
Adds pungent, aromatic warmth to the spiced liquid.

The step that matters

Breaking and steeping the walnuts. Pricking and breaking the walnuts lets salt water penetrate the shells and flesh, drawing out juice over the long rest. Stirring keeps the pickle even so the walnuts ferment and soften uniformly rather than spoiling in pockets.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, ginger, clove, nutmeg, shallot, celery):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, ginger, clove, nutmeg, shallot, celery. 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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