Skip to main content
Sauce

Fish Sauce

A sauce made with egg yolk, mustard, olive oil, lemon juice, vinegar, capers, and cucumber pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolk and mustard together.

  2. Slowly add the olive oil, a little at a time, while continuously beating.

  3. Add the lemon juice and vinegar, pouring in drops as you add the oil.

Chill and serve

  1. Chill the sauce in the refrigerator.

  2. Just before serving, mix in the capers and chopped cucumber pickle.

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. Mustard + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lemon + caperstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Emulsifies the oil and water-based liquids into a thick, stable sauce.
Mustard
Helps hold the emulsion together and adds sharpness.
Olive oil
Forms the body of the sauce, giving it richness and a smooth texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the oil.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps keep the emulsion balanced.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly. Oil must be added a little at a time while beating, so the yolk can disperse it into tiny droplets. Adding it too fast can cause the sauce to split and separate.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, mustard, olive, vinegar, capers, cucumber):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, olive, vinegar, capers, cucumber. 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

Hot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesMixed MustardMixed Mustard9 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipes