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Sauce

Fish Sauce A-LA -chaster

A savory sauce made with anchovies, mace, cloves, pepper, onions, herbs, parsley, horseradish, sherry, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,768 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Fish Sauce A-LA -chaster

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan and whisk in flour until thickened and browned.

  2. Add anchovies, mace, cloves, black pepper, small onions, sweet herbs, parsley, and horseradish.

  3. Pour in sherry and strong gravy, then simmer gently for 20 minutes.

Strain and store

  1. Strain mixture through sieve and bottle for later use.

Use

  1. To use, boil some of the sauce in butter while melting.

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

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Clove + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Dissolve into the liquid to give the sauce its salty, savoury depth.
Butter
Provides fat that carries the flavours and enriches the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and gives the base body as it cooks and browns.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic sweetness that brightens the savoury base.
Strong gravy
Supplies the main liquid and meaty savouriness for the sauce.
Horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent heat that mellows during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmering the sauce. Gentle simmering lets the anchovies and aromatics slowly release their flavour into the liquid. A hard boil can break down the flour thickening and make the sauce cloudy or bitter.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, clove, pepper, onion, thyme, basil. 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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