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Sauce

Fish Sauce,

A fermented anchovy sauce made with herbs, spices, wine, lemon, and catsup or soy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fish Sauce,

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine anchovies, shallots, mace, horseradish, cloves, allspice, white wine, water, lemon rind, and lemon juice in a pot.

  2. Boil until the mixture is reduced to ½ cup.

  3. Strain the sauce and stir in catsup or soy 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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Horseradish + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Shallot + lemontop 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 the deep, salty, savoury backbone that gives the sauce its fish-sauce character.
Shallots
Add mild sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften in the liquid.
White wine
Adds acidity and carries the spices, helping extract their flavour during the boil.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that balances the salty and savoury notes.
Catsup or soy sauce
Adds extra savoury umami and colour to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Boil until reduced to ½ cup. Reducing concentrates the salt, acid and savoury flavours while the spices infuse. Stopping too early leaves the sauce thin and weakly flavoured, while over-reducing makes it overly salty and intense.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, horseradish, clove, allspice, white wine, lemon, sauce. 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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