Fish Sauce

This sauce recipe comes from approximately 1725, a time when British and European cookery was evolving rapidly, embracing more complex flavors and imported ingredients. Anchovy-based sauces were popular, reflecting both the influence of French haute cuisine and the growing popularity of savory, umami flavors in English kitchens. Such sauces were designed to keep well in an age before refrigeration, making them both practical and versatile for stewing or enriching fish dishes like carp or pike. The use of wine, vinegar, and aromatic spices shows the mingling of continental and English tastes in the early Georgian era, and speaks to a flourishing trade network that delivered exotic spices like mace and allspice into the British larder.

Back in the early 18th century, this sauce would have been made using a large metal saucepan or pot, hung over an open hearth fire or placed on a cast iron stove-top. A wooden spoon would be used for stirring. To strain the sauce, a coarse linen or muslin cloth would be used, perhaps supported over a ceramic or pewter bowl. A mortar and pestle may have assisted in bruising the herbs or grinding mace, though whole spices were often used. Thickening was usually done with flour or even breadcrumbs.