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Walnut Catsup
Take forty black walnuts that you can stick a pin through, mash and put them in a gallon of vinegar, boil it down to three quarts and strain; add a few cloves of garlic or onions, with any spice liked, and salt. When cool, bottle. Have good corks. - Mrs. A. C.
A green-walnut catsup of the old English type, made American by the use of black walnuts. Everything depends on catching the nuts at the right stage.
- The pin test is the whole recipeThe walnuts must be green — hull and shell still soft enough that a pin passes straight through. Depending on region and season that is usually somewhere from late June into July; once the shell begins to harden the nuts are no longer usable for this.
- Quantity and yieldForty green walnuts is roughly 3 to 4 lb of whole nuts, hulls and all, depending on size. The gallon of vinegar is boiled down to three quarts before straining, so the finished strained catsup comes out somewhat under three quarts — still a great deal, and a half batch is more realistic for a modern household.
- Wear glovesGreen walnut hulls contain juglone and related compounds that oxidise on contact with air and stain skin a deep brown that takes a week or more to wear off. Nitrile gloves, and do the mashing somewhere you do not mind marking.
- Vinegar strengthNineteenth-century household vinegar was variable; use a standard 5 percent cider or malt vinegar. The acidity is what preserves the catsup, so do not dilute it or substitute a low-acid specialty vinegar.
- Pan and ventilationUse stainless steel or enamelled cast iron. Aluminium and bare copper react with hot vinegar. Boiling down a gallon of vinegar throws off sharp fumes for an hour or more, so run the extractor or open a window.
- "Any spice liked"Period walnut-ketchup recipes commonly call on black peppercorns, allspice, cloves, mace and ginger; the recipe itself leaves the choice open. As a starting point, about a tablespoon of mixed whole spices per quart of finished catsup, with two or three garlic cloves or a sliced onion. Salt to taste at the end, starting near 1 tablespoon per quart.
- Strain twiceThe first strain through a colander removes the mashed hulls; a second pass through muslin gives a sauce that pours clean and does not throw sediment in the bottle.
- Bottling and keeping"Have good corks" meant an airtight seal on an unrefrigerated bottle. Sterilised bottles with screw caps do the same job. The catsup is highly acidic and salty and keeps well, but refrigerate after opening, and give it a month in the bottle before use — the raw astringency of green walnut softens considerably with age.
- How it is usedThis is a thin, dark, savoury condiment rather than a ketchup in the tomato sense. A spoonful goes into gravies, stews and pan sauces for beef and game, or over grilled meat.
Walnut catsup belongs to the older meaning of the word, when a catsup was any thin, dark, salted, long-keeping liquid seasoning — mushroom, oyster, anchovy and walnut were all standard, and tomato was the newcomer. The style came to America directly from English household books, where green-walnut ketchup had been made since at least the eighteenth century from nuts picked green, while the shells were still soft. The Dixie Cook Book (1883) collects it among the catsups and sauces alongside tomato and mushroom, and the substitution of native black walnut for the English walnut of the source tradition is the American mark on the recipe. That it is signed only "Mrs. A. C." is typical of the book, which appears to have drawn on contributed household receipts, a number of them credited by initials alone.