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Sauce

Another Fish Sauce

A sauce made by boiling anchovies, onion, and horseradish in stock, then thickening with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,784 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Another Fish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the anchovies, onion, and horseradish in stock.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Thicken the strained stock with butter rolled in 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. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Horseradish + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Provide a salty, savory base flavor that dissolves into the stock.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth as it simmers into the stock.
Horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent aroma that mellows during boiling.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor and becomes the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells when heated in the stock.

The step that matters

Thickening with butter rolled in flour. Flour clumps if dropped into hot liquid dry. Coating it in butter helps the starch disperse evenly, so stirring it in while the stock is hot gives a smooth sauce instead of lumps.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour. 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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