Name: Fish Sauce Wtthout Butter
Ingredients: ½ cup vinegar; ½ cup water (soft water preferred); 1 onion; ½ handful scraped horseradish; 4 cloves; 2 blades of mace; ½ teaspoon black pepper

Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Fish Sauce Wtthout Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer

Simmer vinegar and water gently in a pot.
Add the onion, horseradish and bruised spices.
Cook until the onion is tender.

Finish

Chop the onion finely before serving.

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.

Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,784 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Horseradish + clovetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,245 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Horseradish + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,646 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

Vinegar: Provides the sharp acidity that defines the sauce.
Onion: Softens and sweetens as it cooks, adding body to the flavour.
Horseradish: Its pungent compounds release heat-sensitive sharpness into the liquid.
Cloves: Adds warm, aromatic flavour that infuses the liquid during simmering.
Mace: Contributes a delicate, warm aroma to the sauce.
Black pepper: Adds mild pungency that rounds out the spiced flavour.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, onion, horseradish, clove, pepper):

Allspicefits better
Garlicfits better
Tarragonfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, onion, horseradish, clove, 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.