Skip to main content
Drink

Fish Sauce

A fermented fish sauce made by simmering walnut pickle, shallots, mushroom ketchup, soy sauce, anchovies, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the shallots and anchovies very finely.

  2. Combine all ingredients in a saucepan.

Cook

  1. Simmer for fifteen minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture.

Bottle

  1. Let it cool, then bottle and seal for use.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Walnut pickle
Adds tangy, savoury depth and dark colour.
Shallots
Add sharp aromatic flavour that mellows during simmering.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the sauce.
Soy sauce
Adds salty, savoury depth and rich colour.
Anchovies
Melt into the liquid, adding salty, savoury umami depth.

The step that matters

Simmer for fifteen minutes. Simmering gently concentrates flavour and softens the finely chopped shallots and anchovies. Boiling hard or simmering too long can reduce the volume too far and make the sauce overly salty and intense.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, mushroom, ketchup, sauce, pepper):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, mushroom, ketchup, sauce, 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.

More fish sauce recipes

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

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes