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Sauce

Fish Sauce a-LA-Oraster

A thickened sauce made from anchovies, spices, sherry, and gravy, strained and bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fish Sauce a-LA-Oraster

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Whisk in the flour to thicken it.

  3. Brown the mixture.

Simmer and finish

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

  2. Pour in the sherry and strong gravy.

  3. Simmer gently for 20 minutes.

  4. Strain the sauce through a sieve.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  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
Break down during simmering to give the sauce its deep, savoury, salty flavour.
Flour
Thickens the butter and body of the sauce as a roux, giving it a smooth consistency.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the aromatics and forms the base for the flour roux.
Strong gravy
Supplies the liquid and savoury depth that the sauce simmers in.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic richness that rounds out the savoury flavours.

The step that matters

Browning the roux. Browning the butter and flour mixture develops nutty, toasted flavour through the Maillard reaction and caramelisation. Stop too early and the sauce tastes raw; too long and it turns bitter.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, clove, allspice, 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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