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Sauce

Quin’s Fish Sauce

A fermented anchovy sauce flavored with port wine, shallots, walnut ketchup, cloves, mace, and long pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Quin’s Fish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dissolve the anchovies in the port wine.

  2. Bruise the shallots.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil them in the walnut catsup with cloves, mace, and long pepper.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

  3. Mix in the dissolved anchovies and additional port wine.

Store

  1. Store in small bottles.

  2. Cork well.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

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

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Walnut + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Dissolved into the liquid to give the sauce a deep, savoury, salty flavour.
Shallots
Bruising and boiling release their aromatic compounds into the catsup, adding savoury depth.
Walnut catsup
Forms the liquid base and carries the spices and savoury flavour throughout the sauce.
Port wine
Dissolves the anchovies and adds sweetness and fruity body to the sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, shallot, walnut, clove, pepper):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, shallot, walnut, clove, pepper. 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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