Skip to main content
Sauce

Fish Sauce to Keep a Yeab

A preserved anchovy-based sauce made by boiling anchovies, shallots, horseradish, mace, wines, water, lemon, cloves, and peppercorns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 to Keep a Yeab

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the chopped anchovies, shallots, horseradish, mace, white wine, water, lemon slices, anchovy liquor, red wine, cloves, and peppercorns in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reduces to 1 quart.

  3. Strain the sauce and transfer it to a bottle, sealing it tightly.

Store and use

  1. Store the bottle in a cold, dry place.

  2. To use, heat 1 teaspoon of the sauce and mix it with ½ pound of batter and a little flour.

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. White wine + red winetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 savory, salty base that gives the sauce its depth of flavor.
White wine
Adds acidity and liquid that helps extract flavor from the other ingredients during boiling.
Red wine
Adds acidity, color, and additional depth of flavor to the reduced sauce.
Shallots
Contribute a mild sweetness and aromatic flavor as they cook down into the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it reduces to 1 quart. Reducing by boiling concentrates the flavors and evaporates excess water, so the sauce becomes richer and keeps better in storage. Stopping too early leaves it weak and more perishable.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, horseradish, white wine, lemon, anchovy, red wine, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, horseradish, white wine, lemon, anchovy, red wine, clove. 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

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesHot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesHorseradish Cream SauceHorseradish Cream Sauce6 recipesWine Sauce for Sweet PuddingsWine Sauce for Sweet Puddings6 recipes