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Sauce

Fish Sauce

A mayonnaise-like sauce made with egg yolks, salt, cayenne pepper, butter or olive oil, parsley, and lemon juice or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks.

  2. Add salt, cayenne, melted butter or olive oil, parsley, and lemon juice or vinegar. Mix until well combined to create a mayonnaise-like sauce.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the fat and water, giving the sauce a thick, creamy structure.
Melted butter or olive oil
Supplies fat that is emulsified into the yolks, adding richness and body.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the fat.
Parsley
Contributes fresh, herbal aroma and a little color to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the fat to the yolks. Egg yolks emulsify fat only when it is added gradually while mixing. Pouring it in too quickly can cause the sauce to split and stay loose instead of thickening.

“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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