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Sauce

An Excellent Fish Sauce

A savoury sauce made from walnut ketchup, port wine, anchovies, lemon, spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

An Excellent Fish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine walnut ketchup, port wine, anchovies, lemon rind, lemon juice, eschalots, horseradish, mace, mustard, ginger, and Cayenne.

  2. Simmer until the anchovies dissolve, then add vinegar and simmer for a few more minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture and let it cool.

  4. 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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + horseradishtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together259 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Walnut + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + horseradishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 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

Anchovies
Dissolve into the liquid to add a deep, savory backbone to the sauce.
Walnut ketchup
Provides a dark, rich, savory base that carries the other flavors.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and body to the liquid during simmering.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and helps preserve it.
Eschalots
Contribute a mild onion-like aroma and savory depth as they simmer.

The step that matters

Simmer until the anchovies dissolve. Anchovies need enough heat and time to break down fully; leftover pieces would make the sauce gritty and uneven in flavor. Adding vinegar only after this stage keeps its sharp notes from being cooked off too early.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, ketchup, port wine, lemon, horseradish, mustard, ginger):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, ketchup, port wine, lemon, horseradish, mustard, ginger. 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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