Skip to main content
Sauce

Fish Sauce Without Butter

A sauce made from vinegar, water, onion, horseradish, cloves, mace, black pepper, anchovies, ketchup, and egg yolks, simmered and thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Fish Sauce Without Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Simmer vinegar and water gently 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 ketchup.

Add the yolks

  1. Beat the egg yolks and strain them.

  2. Gradually mix the hot liquid with the egg yolks, stirring constantly.

  3. Heat the saucepan gently.

  4. Toss the sauce to prevent curdling 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Horseradish + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Horseradish + ketchuptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 rich, emulsified body.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the yolks and the savoury flavours.
Anchovies
Contribute a deep, savoury background flavour to the sauce.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent aroma that gives the sauce its characteristic bite.

The step that matters

Adding the hot liquid to the yolks. Pouring hot liquid in too quickly or without constant stirring can scramble the egg yolks and cause curdling. Adding it gradually and stirring keeps the yolks smooth and lets them thicken the sauce evenly.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, onion, horseradish, clove, pepper, ketchup, egg. 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.

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