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Sauce

Fish Sauce, to Keep a Year

A preserved anchovy-based sauce made with wine, liquor, claret, spices, and herbs, kept for a year.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fish Sauce, to Keep a Year

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine all ingredients in a pot.

  2. Boil until the mixture is reduced to 1 quart.

  3. Strain the sauce into a bottle 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. Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Horseradish + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Shallot + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together881 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Provide the salty, savory umami base that defines the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and liquid that carries flavor as the sauce reduces.
Claret
Adds acidity, tannin and color while contributing to the reduced liquid.
Anchovy liquor
Concentrates the anchovy flavor into the reduced liquid.
Shallots
Contribute aromatic sweetness and savory depth as they cook down.

The step that matters

Boil until reduced to 1 quart. Boiling concentrates the salt, acidity and savory flavor as water evaporates. Reducing too little leaves the sauce thin and weak, while over-reducing makes it overly salty and intense. Checking the volume against the 1 quart target keeps the balance right.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, horseradish, white wine, anchovy, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, horseradish, white wine, anchovy, clove. 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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