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Fish Sauce
To a quart of the best vinegar add an ounce and a half of cayenne pepper, two or three shallots, a few shreds of garlic, and two table-spoonfuls each of walnut ketchup and soy. To be kept in a large bottle, and well shaken every day. At the end of a fortnight divide the sauce, and keep it well sealed in small bottles. Use as required. It will be fit for use in about three weeks. Probable cost, 1s. for this quantity.
A steeped condiment vinegar rather than a cooked sauce — the only technique involved is waiting and shaking. The points below cover the units, the two ingredients that have shifted meaning, and how much heat you are actually signing up for.
- "Fish sauce" means sauce for fishThis is not the fermented anchovy liquid sold under that name today. It is a spiced vinegar to be spooned over fried or boiled fish at table, in the manner of a sharp Worcestershire.stir it in by the teaspoon, not the cup.
- The quart is imperialAn imperial quart is 40 fl oz, about 5 US cups. If you measure with a US quart (32 fl oz) the sauce will come out noticeably fiercer, which may be no bad thing but is worth knowing before you buy the cayenne.
- An ounce and a half of cayenneThat is roughly 7-8 tablespoons of ground cayenne to the quart — an extremely hot infusion by current tastes. Halving it still gives a sauce with real bite, and the flavour of the shallot, garlic and soy has a chance to register.
- Walnut ketchupA dark, thin, salty condiment made from green walnuts, still produced in Britain by a few firms and findable online. Mushroom ketchup is the closest common substitute; Worcestershire sauce will do at a pinch, though it brings its own tamarind and anchovy character.
- SoySoy sauce, though the bottled Victorian 'soy' was often a darker, thicker imported table condiment rather than the everyday soy sauce of today. It sat on the cruet stand alongside ketchups and essences.
- Vinegar quality matters"The best vinegar" means a good malt or cider vinegar of full strength, around 5 per cent acidity. The acid is what makes the keeping possible, so do not dilute it or use a low-acid seasoned rice vinegar.
- Straining and bottlingThe recipe divides the sauce at a fortnight but says nothing about the solids. Strain through muslin as you decant if you want a clear sauce; leaving the cayenne in means it will continue to sediment and to strengthen. Use scalded bottles with tight caps and store cool and dark.
- Yield and costAbout five cups, which is a great deal of condiment — a quarter batch is more realistic for one household. The "1s." is a shilling, the kind of pricing note Cassell's gave throughout so a cook could reckon whether a dish was worth making.
Cassell's places this among the storecupboard sauces that a late-Victorian cook was expected to lay down in advance rather than buy: a family of vinegar-based table condiments — cayenne vinegar, camp sauce, mushroom and walnut ketchups — that stood in cruets and were shaken over plain fish, chops and cold meat. Walnut ketchup, made from green walnuts salted and pressed before the shells harden, is one of the oldest of the English ketchups, appearing in printed cookery well before tomato ketchup existed, and the word ketchup itself is generally traced to a Southeast Asian fermented-fish or brine word that reached England through the East India trade. The presence of both walnut ketchup and "soy" in a single bottle is a neat picture of that trade: an old English pickling tradition and an imported Asian condiment sitting together in the same vinegar, sharpened with cayenne.