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Anchovy Sauce

Anchovy sauce made by soaking anchovies, stewing, straining, and heating with butter, cayenne pepper, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Anchovy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the anchovies

  1. Soak the anchovies in cold water for several hours.

  2. Cut the anchovies up.

  3. Stew them in a little water for 20 minutes.

Finish the sauce

  1. Strain the mixture into a cup with butter.

  2. Pour the strained mixture into a saucepan and heat until boiling.

  3. Serve in a sauce tureen.

  4. Add cayenne pepper and lemon juice.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Salty, savory base that breaks down into the sauce, giving it depth.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the sauce smooth and rich.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the salty, savory flavour.

The step that matters

Heating the strained mixture until boiling. Butter stirred into a hot liquid can separate and leave the sauce greasy if it is heated too hard. Bring it just to a boil and stop, so the sauce stays smooth before the lemon and cayenne are added.

“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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