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Another Fish Sauce

A sauce made by boiling water with anchovies, cloves, mace, lemon peel, peppercorns, then adding port wine and thickening with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Another Fish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the water with anchovies, cloves, mace, lemon peel, and peppercorns.

  2. Add port wine and strain the mixture.

  3. Thicken the sauce by rolling butter in flour and adding it to the strained sauce.

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 + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Clove + port winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Port wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Dissolve into the liquid to give the sauce its savoury, salty depth.
Butter
Rolled in flour and stirred in, it adds richness and body to the sauce.
Flour
Coats the butter so it thickens the strained liquid without lumps.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and fruity depth to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour. Rolling butter in flour and whisking it into hot liquid lets the starch swell evenly, thickening the sauce smoothly instead of leaving lumps.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, lemon, port wine, butter, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, lemon, port wine, butter, flour. 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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