Skip to main content
Sauce

Fish Sauce, Without Butter

A sauce made from horseradish, onion, cloves, mace, water, vinegar, anchovies, salt, pepper, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Horse and radish work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 529 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Fish Sauce, Without Butter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil horseradish, onion, cloves, and mace in water and vinegar until the onion is soft.

  2. Mince the soft onion with the anchovies and stir into the sauce.

  3. Add salt and black pepper.

  4. Gradually mix in the strained egg yolks.

  5. Transfer the sauce to a basin and stir over heat until thick enough to serve.

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. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Radish + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together508 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Radish + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together196 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a rich, smooth body as they set with gentle heat.
Anchovies
Add a deep, savoury saltiness that rounds out the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the egg yolks.
Horse-radish
Contributes pungent heat and aroma that is mellowed by boiling.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks over heat. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if the sauce gets too hot or is not stirred, the proteins can scramble and turn grainy. Stir constantly over low heat and keep the sauce below a simmer until it thickens.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horse, radish, onion, clove, vinegar, pepper, 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.

More fish sauce recipes

Anchovy 24White 9Dutch 8Broiled 5Brown 5Walnut 5 See all 106 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes