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Sauce

A Fine Fish Sauce

A sauce made from anchovies, port wine, walnut catsup, walnut pickles, lemon, shallots, cayenne, horseradish, mace, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Fine Fish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine port wine, walnut catsup, anchovies with their liquor, walnut pickles, lemon rind and juice, shallots, cayenne pepper, horseradish, mace, and mustard.

  2. Boil gently until the rawness is gone.

  3. Pour into small bottles and cork tightly for storage.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Provide a salty, savoury depth that defines the sauce's character.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and body to the liquid base of the sauce.
Walnut catsup
Contributes concentrated savoury, tangy flavour to the base.
Walnut pickles
Add acidity and sharp flavour that balances the richer ingredients.
Horseradish
Adds pungent heat and aroma that mellows during gentle boiling.

The step that matters

Boil gently until the rawness is gone. Raw shallot, alcohol and horseradish carry sharp, harsh flavours. Gentle simmering mellows these and blends the ingredients, while a hard boil can over-reduce the liquid and make the flavour bitter or sharp.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, walnut, lemon, shallot, pepper, horseradish, mustard):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, walnut, lemon, shallot, pepper, horseradish, mustard. 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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