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Sauce

Simpson’s Fish Sauce

A sauce made from anchovies, shallots, horseradish, mace, cloves, lemons, anchovy liquor, wine, water, and walnut ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Simpson’s Fish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the anchovies and shallots.

  2. Scrape the horseradish.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine anchovies, shallots, horseradish, mace, cloves, lemons, anchovy liquor, wine, and water in a pot.

  2. Boil until reduced to 1 quart.

  3. Strain the mixture and let it cool.

Bottle

  1. Add walnut ketchup and bottle the sauce, sealing well.

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. Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Shallot + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 give the sauce its deep, savoury, umami flavour.
Shallots
Add aromatic sweetness and savoury depth as they cook down into the liquid.
Hock or rhenish wine
Provides acidity and body, helping extract flavour from the other ingredients.
Walnut ketchup
Adds a dark, concentrated savoury richness and extra umami at the end.

The step that matters

Boil until reduced to 1 quart. Boiling concentrates the flavours and evaporates excess water, so the sauce keeps and tastes intense. Stopping too early leaves it thin and weak; over-reducing makes it overly salty and harsh.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, horseradish, clove, lemon, anchovy, wine, walnut):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, horseradish, clove, lemon, anchovy, wine, walnut. 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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