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Sauce

Fish Sauce

A sauce made by simmering anchovy meat with water or broth, garlic, cayenne pepper, and thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the anchovies

  1. Wash the anchovies thoroughly.

  2. Remove the meat from the bones and mash it finely with a knife.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the anchovy meat, water or fish broth, garlic, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Simmer the mixture on low heat for 30 minutes.

  3. Thicken the sauce with butter rolled in flour and bring it to a boil.

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. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  3. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Provide the main savoury, salty flavour and the body of the sauce once mashed.
Water or fish broth
Forms the liquid base in which the anchovy meat simmers and softens.
Garlic
Adds aroma and a sharp savoury note to the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smoother mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the liquid when cooked with butter, giving the sauce body.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with butter rolled in flour and bring it to a boil. Flour needs to be heated long enough to cook out its raw taste and to swell and thicken the liquid. Adding it without bringing the sauce to a boil can leave it lumpy or floury.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, clove, pepper, butter, flour. 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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