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Fish Sauce

A thickened sauce made with vinegar, water, onion, horseradish, cloves, mace, black pepper, anchovies, ketchup, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Fish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Simmer vinegar and water with onion, horseradish, cloves, mace, and black pepper until the onion is tender.

  2. Chop the onion small and mix it with the anchovies and ketchup.

  3. Boil for a few minutes.

Finish the sauce

  1. Beat the egg yolks and strain them.

  2. Gradually mix in the sauce.

  3. Heat the mixture gently, shaking the saucepan to prevent curdling.

  4. Heat until it thickens like melted butter.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Horseradish + ketchuptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they set gently with heat.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness and acidity that balances the rich, savoury flavours.
Anchovies
Provide deep savoury, umami flavour that gives the sauce its character.
Onion
Contributes sweetness and body as it softens into the liquid.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture gently while shaking the saucepan. Egg yolks scramble and curdle when heated too quickly or left still. Gentle heat and constant movement let the yolks thicken the sauce smoothly, like melted butter, without setting into lumps.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, onion, horseradish, clove, pepper, ketchup, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, onion, horseradish, clove, pepper, ketchup, egg. 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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