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Sauce

A Fine Fish Sauce

A fish sauce made from walnut and mushroom pickles, anchovies, garlic, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

A Fine Fish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine walnut pickle, mushroom pickle, pounded anchovies, pounded garlic, and cayenne pepper, and mix well until fully combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a bottle for storage.

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. Mushroom + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 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

Anchovies
Provide a concentrated salty, savory depth that defines the fish sauce flavor.
Walnut pickle
Supplies the main liquid base and its own pickled, savory character to the sauce.
Mushroom pickle
Adds a further liquid base and earthy, savory umami to the blend.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma that mellows and rounds out in the finished sauce.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, clove, garlic, pepper):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, clove, garlic, 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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