Skip to main content
Sauce

Fish

A fermented fish sauce made from anchovies, shallots, garlic, and meat glaze, reduced and stored in gallipot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the liquor

  1. Dissolve the ingredients and run the liquid through a sieve.

  2. Add 2 ounces of boned anchovies, 2 ounces of chopped shallots, and ½ ounce of garlic to the quart of juice.

  3. Boil for 1 hour, then rub through a fine sieve.

Finish and store

  1. Reduce the liquid by a fourth and mix with an equal quantity of meat glaze.

  2. Transfer to gallipot, tie with bladder and leather, and store in a cool 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. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Garlic + meattop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,530 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Juice
Forms the liquid base that the other ingredients are simmered and concentrated in.
Anchovies
Dissolve during boiling to add deep, savoury, salty flavour.
Shallots
Add a mild aromatic sweetness and background flavour to the liquid.
Garlic
Adds a pungent aroma that mellows during boiling.
Meat glaze
Adds concentrated savoury body and richness when mixed into the reduced liquid.

The step that matters

Reducing the liquid by a fourth. Reduction concentrates the flavour and body of the liquid before the glaze is added. Reducing only to the stated amount keeps the sauce from becoming overly intense or salty once the glaze is mixed in.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, meat):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, meat. 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.

More fish sauce recipes

Anchovy 24White 9Dutch 8Broiled 5Brown 5Walnut 5 See all 106 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes