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To Mare Ancihovie Liquor to Be Used in Fish Sauces

Anchovy liquor made by simmering anchovies with water, aromatics, and seasonings, then strained and bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Mare Ancihovie Liquor to Be Used in Fish Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Make the liquor

  1. Combine anchovies, water, bay leaves, whole pepper, horseradish, thyme, mace, and chopped eschalots in a stewpan.

  2. Boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture through a tamis cloth using a wooden spoon.

Bottle and store

  1. Once cooled, pour into pint bottles, cork them tightly, and store in a dry place.

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. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  4. Horseradish + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Horseradish + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Provide the salty, savoury base flavour of the liquor.
Eschalots
Add aromatic sweetness and depth to the simmered liquid.
Water
Extracts flavour from the anchovies and other aromatics during boiling.

The step that matters

Boiling for 20 minutes. Boiling long enough extracts flavour from the anchovies and aromatics, but the liquid must then be strained fully so solids do not cloud or spoil the stored liquor.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, horseradish, thyme, lemon, ketchup):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, horseradish, thyme, lemon, ketchup. 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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