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Sauce

Fish Sauce Without Butter

A sauce made from anchovies, egg yolks, ketchup, and spices, simmered with vinegar and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 Without Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the flavouring liquid

  1. Simmer vinegar and water with onion, horseradish, and spices until the onion is tender.

  2. Chop the onion and anchovies.

  3. Add the chopped onion and anchovies to the mixture and boil for a few minutes with ketchup.

Thicken the sauce

  1. Beat the egg yolks and strain them.

  2. Gradually mix the strained egg yolks into the hot liquid.

  3. Place the saucepan over gentle heat.

  4. Toss the sauce to prevent curdling until it thickens like melted butter.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Horseradish + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Horseradish + ketchuptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the egg yolks.
Anchovies
Contribute a salty, savoury depth that rounds out the sauce.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury flavour to the simmered liquid.

The step that matters

Keeping the sauce from curdling. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot, so the sauce must be added gradually to warm liquid over gentle heat and kept moving. Constant tossing spreads the heat evenly, so the yolks thicken smoothly rather than turning grainy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

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