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Sauce

Fish Sauce A-LA-craster

A sauce made with butter, flour, anchovies, spices, herbs, sherry, and gravy.

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 whisk in the flour until browned.

  2. Add the chopped anchovies, ground mace, cloves, black peppercorns, allspice, onions, 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. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Clove + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Dissolve into the sauce to give it a deep, savoury, salty backbone.
Flour
Thickens the butter and gravy mixture into a body that clings to food.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness and a rounded, mellow flavour.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften into the sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and a fruity, winey note that brightens the savoury base.

The step that matters

Whisking the flour until browned. Flour cooked in butter must brown evenly to develop a nutty flavour and lose its raw taste; scorching gives bitterness, while stopping early leaves the sauce floury and dull.

Swap the mace

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

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

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