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Sauce

Fish Sauce

A sauce made from boiled fish liver, butter, flour, water, cayenne pepper, and tarragon vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,399 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Rub the flour into the butter until well combined.

  2. Place the mixture in a pan with the water.

  3. Bruise the boiled liver of the fish very fine.

  4. Add cayenne pepper and tarragon vinegar to the liver.

  5. When the butter mixture begins to boil, add the liver mixture and remove from heat.

Serve

  1. Serve in a boat or over the 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. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + tarragontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together788 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 of the sauce and carries the flavor.
Flour
Thickens the butter mixture so the sauce holds together.
Boiled liver of fish
Provides the main body and savory flavor of the sauce.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and liver.

The step that matters

Adding the liver mixture to the boiling butter. Once the butter mixture begins to boil, the liver should be added and the pan removed from heat promptly. Overheating a butter and flour emulsion can cause it to separate or turn greasy, so the sauce stays smooth only if heat is controlled.

Swap the tarragon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, liver, fish, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Tarragonthe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, liver, fish, pepper, vinegar. 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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