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Sauce

Another Fish Sauce

A sauce made from hard‑boiled egg yolks, mustard, pepper, salt, salad oil, vinegar, and lemon ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Another Fish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add mustard, pepper, and salt to the yolks.

  3. Stir in salad oil and vinegar.

  4. Finally, mix in the lemon ketchup until well combined.

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

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil and form a thick, creamy base for the sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and helps stabilise the emulsion.
Salad oil
Provides fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, silky texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Lemon ketchup
Contributes sweetness, tang and aroma to season the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the oil and vinegar. Oil must be incorporated gradually into the mashed yolks so the fat disperses into tiny droplets. Adding it too quickly can cause the emulsion to break, leaving the sauce oily and separated.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, mustard, pepper, vinegar, ketchup):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Red currantfits less well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, pepper, vinegar, ketchup. 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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