Name: Fish Sauce
Ingredients: 1 quart malt vinegar; 2 tablespoons walnut ketchup; 2 tablespoons soy sauce; 1 ounce cayenne pepper; 1 clove garlic; 2 shallots, sliced

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 all ingredients in a large bottle.
Shake the bottle daily for 14 days.

Strain and store

After 14 days, strain the mixture into small bottles.
Cork the bottles securely and store for 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.

Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,099 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,090 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Walnut + clovetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,592 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,368 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Malt vinegar: Provides acidity that preserves the sauce and gives it a sharp, tangy bite.
Walnut ketchup: Adds deep, savoury umami flavour to the sauce.
Soy sauce: Contributes salty, savoury depth that rounds out the sauce.
Cayenne pepper: Adds heat and pungency to the sauce.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (malt, vinegar, ketchup, sauce, pepper, clove, garlic):

Beansfits better
Sesamefits better
Chestnutfits about as well
Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against malt, vinegar, ketchup, sauce, pepper, clove, garlic. 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.