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Sauce

Fish Sauce to Keep a Year

A preserved anchovy-based sauce made with wine, water, spices, and lemon, kept for up to a year.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 Year

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine 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.

Bottle and store

  1. Transfer the strained sauce to a bottle.

  2. Cork the bottle tightly.

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

Finish with butter

  1. Heat 1 teaspoon of the sauce.

  2. Mix the heated sauce with ½ pound of butter 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 during boiling to build a salty, savoury depth of flavour in the sauce.
Shallots
Add aromatic sweetness and savoury body as they soften into the liquid.
Red wine
Adds acidity and colour, and helps extract flavour from the other ingredients.
White wine
Contributes acidity and a lighter body, helping the liquid reduce into a concentrated sauce.
Butter (in the method)
Adds fat and richness, giving the finished sauce a smoother, rounder texture.

The step that matters

Boiling down to 1 quart. Reducing the liquid concentrates the salt, acid and flavour of the anchovies and wine. Boiling too briefly leaves the sauce weak and watery, while over-reducing makes it overly salty and thick.

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.

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