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Sauce

Fish Sauces

A buttery sauce flavored with anchovy, soy, mushroom ketchup, cayenne, chili vinegar, and lemon, served warm over fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fish Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter until it is thick enough to adhere to the fish.

  2. Dilute the melted butter with essence of anchovy, soy sauce, mushroom ketchup, cayenne pepper, chili vinegar, and lemon juice. Mix well to combine all ingredients.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce warm over cooked fish.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Forms the rich base that thickens and clings to the fish.
Essence of anchovy
Adds a salty, savoury depth of flavour to the sauce.
Soy sauce
Contributes salt and savoury umami to the sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami-rich flavour and darkens the sauce slightly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter.

The step that matters

Melt the butter until it is thick enough to adhere to the fish. Butter that is too thin will run off rather than coat the fish, while overheated butter can separate and turn greasy. Melting gently until it is just thick enough lets it cling and blend smoothly with the other ingredients.

“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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