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Sauce

Fish Sauce Without Butter

A thickened fish sauce made with anchovies, vinegar, 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 sauce base

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

  2. Chop the onion small with anchovies.

  3. Boil for a few minutes with ketchup.

Thicken and finish

  1. Beat the egg yolks and strain them.

  2. Gradually mix the hot liquid with the yolks, stirring constantly over gentle heat.

  3. Keep the sauce hot 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. 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 as they set gently with heat, giving it a smooth body.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the yolks.
Anchovies
Contribute savoury depth to the sauce.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour to the simmered base.

The step that matters

Gradually mix the hot liquid with the yolks, stirring constantly over gentle heat. Egg yolks scramble if they meet hot liquid too quickly or get too hot. Adding the liquid slowly while stirring tempers the yolks so they thicken the sauce 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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