Skip to main content
Sauce

Fish Sauce u-Ia-Crastcr

A savoury sauce made from anchovies, spices, herbs, sherry and strong gravy, thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Fish Sauce u-Ia-Crastcr

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Mix in flour to thicken it.

  3. Brown the mixture.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the chopped anchovies, mace, cloves, black peppercorns, allspice, onions, herbs, parsley, and horseradish.

  2. Pour in the sherry and strong gravy.

  3. Simmer gently for 20 minutes.

Strain and bottle

  1. Strain the sauce through a sieve.

  2. Bottle it for later 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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Basil + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together688 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  4. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Dissolve into the sauce to provide a salty, savoury depth of flavour.
Butter
Carries the aromatic flavours and gives the sauce a rich, smooth body.
Sherry
Adds acidity and a fragrant, slightly sweet note to the liquid.
Strong gravy
Forms the main savoury liquid that the sauce is built on.
Sliced horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent bite that mellows during simmering.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and flour mixture. Browning develops nutty, deeper flavour through the Maillard reaction, but scorched flour turns bitter and can spoil the whole sauce, so stir constantly and watch the colour closely.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, clove, allspice, onion, thyme, basil, marjoram):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, clove, allspice, onion, thyme, basil, marjoram. 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 anchovy sauce recipes

for Fish 3for Steaks 3 See all 155 →

You might also like

Horseradish Cream SauceHorseradish Cream Sauce6 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes