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Sauce

Fish Sauce A-LA Craster

A thickened anchovy-based sauce with spices, herbs, sherry, and gravy, suitable for fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fish Sauce A-LA Craster

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and thicken it with flour until browned.

  2. Add the anchovies, mace, cloves, black pepper, allspice, 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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Break down into the sauce, adding a deep savoury, salty flavour.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter so the sauce becomes body-rich and smooth.
Butter
Carries the flavours and adds richness to the sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce.
Strong gravy
Provides the main liquid and meaty savoury base.

The step that matters

Thickening the butter with flour until browned. Cooking flour in fat until browned develops nutty flavour and colour, and if it is undercooked the sauce will taste raw and pasty.

Swap the mace

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

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

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