Name: Fish Sauce
Ingredients: ⅓ cup Port wine; ⅓ cup Walnut Pickle; ⅓ cup Mushroom Ketchup; 6 Anchovies, pounded; 6 Shallots, sliced and pounded; 2 teaspoons Soy sauce; ½ teaspoon Cayenne pepper

Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

Combine Port wine, Walnut Pickle, Mushroom Ketchup, pounded Anchovies, pounded Shallots, Soy sauce, and Cayenne pepper in a saucepan.
Simmer gently for 10 minutes.
Strain the mixture and let it cool.

Bottle and store

Pour into bottles, cork well, and seal.
Store in a cool place; it will keep for a considerable time.

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.

Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,099 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,982 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Walnut + shallottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together440 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Port wine + shallottop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together380 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Port wine + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together570 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 add deep savoury, umami flavour.
Shallots: Add aromatic sweetness and body as they soften during simmering.
Mushroom ketchup: Contributes concentrated savoury umami and depth of flavour.
Walnut pickle: Adds rich, tangy, slightly bitter savoury flavour to the sauce.
Port wine: Adds sweetness, fruity depth and body to the liquid base.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, mushroom, ketchup, shallot, sauce, pepper):

Chestnutfits better
Beansfits about as well
Walnutthe original
Peasfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, mushroom, ketchup, shallot, sauce, 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.