Skip to main content
Sauce

Quin's Fish-Sauce a Store-Sauce

A fermented anchovy-based sauce made with claret, walnut pickle, mushroom ketchup, soy sauce, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ketchup and sauce 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 ↓

Quin's Fish-Sauce a Store-Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine claret, walnut pickle, mushroom ketchup, pounded anchovies, pounded shallots, and soy sauce in a pot.

  2. Simmer slowly by the side of the fire until the bones of the anchovies dissolve.

Strain and bottle

  1. Strain the mixture and let it cool.

  2. Bottle the sauce for use.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Walnut + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Break down into the sauce, adding salty, savoury depth and a meaty backbone.
Shallots
Add aromatic sweetness and body as they soften into the liquid.
Mushroom ketchup
Provides concentrated savoury, umami flavour that forms the sauce's base.
Walnut pickle
Contributes tangy, sharp flavour and acidity to balance the richness.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine character, and helps extract flavour during the simmer.

The step that matters

Simmering until the anchovy bones dissolve. Gentle, slow heat lets the bones break down fully and release their flavour without scorching the liquid. Too hot a simmer can burn the bottom of the pot and make the sauce bitter, while stopping early leaves gritty bone fragments in the finished sauce.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, ketchup, shallot, sauce, pepper):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, ketchup, shallot, sauce, pepper. 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.

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