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Fish Sauce

A sauce made by boiling anchovies, wine, vinegar, spices, and mustard, then straining and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Fish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, combine chopped anchovies, anchovy liquor, shallots, port wine, vinegar, lemon slices, horseradish, mace, nutmeg, peppercorns, cloves, and mustard.

  2. Boil the mixture for 15 to 20 minutes.

Bottle

  1. Allow to cool, then strain and bottle the sauce.

  2. Seal the bottles with waxed corks.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

Anchovies
Dissolve into the liquid to give the sauce its deep savoury, salty flavour.
Port wine
Forms the bulk of the liquid and adds sweetness and body to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and helps preserve it.
Shallots
Contribute a mild, sweet onion aroma that deepens during boiling.
Horseradish
Adds a pungent, sharp heat that fades somewhat as the sauce is cooked.
Lemon
Adds bright citrus acidity and aroma to balance the rich port.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 15 to 20 minutes. Boiling extracts flavour from the spices and anchovies and drives off harsh raw notes from the vinegar and horseradish. Boiling too briefly leaves the sauce sharp and unbalanced, while boiling too long reduces the liquid and concentrates it excessively.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against anchovy, shallot, port wine, vinegar, lemon, horseradish, nutmeg. 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.

More fish sauce recipes

Anchovy 24White 9Dutch 8Broiled 5Brown 5Walnut 5 See all 106 →

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