Skip to main content
Sauce

Fish Sauce a LA Crasteu

A thickened fish sauce made with anchovies, spices, herbs, sherry, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,768 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Fish Sauce a LA Crasteu

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and whisk in the flour until thickened and browned.

  2. Add the chopped anchovies, mace, cloves, black pepper, small onions, sweet herbs, parsley, and horseradish.

  3. Pour in the sherry and strong gravy, then simmer gently for 20 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture through a sieve and bottle it for later use.

Use

  1. To use, boil some of the sauce in butter while melting.

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. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Clove + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Dissolve into the sauce to give it a deep, salty, savoury backbone.
Flour
Thickens the butter and gravy into a body-giving base for the sauce.
Butter
Carries the flour roux and adds richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Strong gravy
Supplies the main liquid and meaty savoury flavour of the sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and a sweet, fortified depth to the liquid.

The step that matters

Browning the flour roux. Whisking flour into melted butter must be cooked until it is browned but not burnt. Browning adds nutty flavour and colour, and the roux thickens the liquid evenly only if it is smooth and well mixed before the gravy goes in.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, clove, pepper, onion, thyme, basil):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, clove, pepper, onion, thyme, basil. 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 →

You might also like

Horseradish Cream SauceHorseradish Cream Sauce6 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes