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Walnut Ketchup (INGREDIENTS sieve)
INGREDIENTS. 1/2 sieve of walnut-shells, 2 quarts of water, salt, 1/2 lb. of shalots, 1 oz. of cloves, 1 oz. of mace, 1 oz. of whole pepper, 1 oz. of garlic.
Put the walnut-shells into a pan with the water and a large quantity of salt; let them stand for 10 days, then break the shells up in the water, and let it drain through a sieve, putting a heavy weight on the top to express the juice; place it on the fire, and remove all the scum that may arise. Now WALNUTS, CANDIED. boil the liquor with the shalots, cloves, mace, pepper and garlic, and let all simmer till the shalots sink; then put the liquor into a pan, and, when cold, bottle and cork closely. It should stand 6 months before using: should it ferment during that time, it must be again boiled and skimmed.
TIME. About hour.
SEASONABLE in September, when the walnut-shells are obtainable.
This is a bottled, low-acid preserve held at room temperature for half a year, and the text as printed has also been mangled by the scanner — stray lines from the neighbouring entries ("We may live without poetry", "WALNUTS, CANDIED", "into a basin, and") have dropped into the middle of the method. The notes below explain the measurements and why the preserving method is the problem.
- Why not to make itThe finished liquor is a salted vegetable extract with no vinegar or other acid, boiled once, bottled cold and corked, then stored six months at room temperature. That is a low-acid liquid in a sealed container held warm — conditions associated with Clostridium botulinum. Most later walnut ketchup recipes carry a substantial proportion of vinegar; this one carries none.
- The salt is not measured"A large quantity of salt" is the only guide for a ten-day ambient brine on 2 quarts of water. Salt is the sole preservative in the first stage and there is no way to know from the text whether the brine reaches a concentration that suppresses spoilage organisms. If you want walnut ketchup, use a current recipe with weighed salt and a stated acid level.
- "Should it ferment, boil it again"Mrs Beeton treats renewed fermentation during storage as a nuisance to be re-boiled away. It is in fact the signal that the preserve was never stable. Re-boiling drives off gas and kills active yeasts; it does not make the bottle safe, and botulinum may give no gas, smell or cloudiness to warn you.
- A "sieve" of shellsA sieve was a market basket, not a strainer — in the London fruit and vegetable trade a sieve held roughly half a bushel, so half a sieve is something on the order of a quarter bushel, perhaps 10-12 lb of husks. The measure varied by commodity and by market, so treat any single figure as approximate.
- "Shells" means the green husksNot the hard woody shell and not the kernel. Walnut ketchup was generally made from the fleshy outer hull. Green walnuts for pickling were gathered earlier, while a pin still passes through the whole nut; Beeton's "seasonable in September" points instead to husks stripped from nuts at the ordinary harvest, by which time the hull has begun to darken and toughen.
- Shalots and the endpointShalot is simply shallot; half a pound is about 225 g. "Simmer till the shalots sink" is the doneness cue — floating alliums have air in their tissue, and they drop when it has cooked out, generally after a long simmer rather than the "about hour" the time line suggests.
- Handling the husksGreen walnut hulls contain juglone and stain skin brown for a week or more; the dye is essentially permanent on fabric. Wear gloves and work away from anything porous. This is an irritant, not a poison.
Ketchup in English began as a thin dark savoury liquor rather than anything tomato-based: mushroom, oyster, anchovy and walnut versions all circulated in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century household books, and the word itself is generally traced to a Southeast Asian fermented fish sauce carried home through the East India trade. Walnut ketchup was the countryside version, because it cost nothing but labour — green husks were a by-product of the walnut harvest, and the same tree supplied pickled walnuts from the whole young nuts. The condiment's job was to give depth to gravies, hashes and made-over meat, the sort of savoury lift that later came from bottled sauces like Worcestershire. Beeton's instruction to lay a weight on the draining sieve and to let the bottles stand half a year before use belongs to a kitchen that budgeted in seasons: you made your sauces once a year, from what the garden gave, and you waited.