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Fish Sauce Without Butter

A sauce made by simmering vinegar, water, onion, horseradish, cloves, mace, black pepper, anchovies, ketchup, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Horse and radish work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 529 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Fish Sauce Without Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Simmer vinegar and water with onion, horseradish, cloves, mace, and black pepper until the onion is tender.

  2. Chop the onion small with the anchovies.

  3. Boil the mixture for a few minutes with the ketchup.

Thicken the sauce

  1. Beat the egg yolks and strain them.

  2. Gradually mix the hot liquid with the egg yolks in a basin, shaking the saucepan to prevent curdling.

  3. Heat until thickened like melted butter without boiling.

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. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Vinegar + radishtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together508 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Radish + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together196 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 and give it a rich, emulsified body as they set with gentle heat.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the egg yolks.
Anchovies
Contribute salty, savoury depth to the sauce.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and body as it softens and breaks down in the liquid.

The step that matters

Gradually mix the hot liquid with the egg yolks. Adding hot liquid to egg yolks too quickly scrambles them. Adding it slowly while stirring or shaking tempers the yolks so they thicken smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, onion, horse, radish, clove, pepper, ketchup. 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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