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Anchovy Sauce for Boiled Fish or Fowl

A buttery anchovy sauce with flour, water, paprika, and salt, served over boiled fish or fowl.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Anchovy Sauce for Boiled Fish or Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Whisk in the flour and cook for 1-2 minutes until lightly golden.

  3. Gradually add the water, stirring constantly until smooth.

Season and serve

  1. Add a dust of paprika, salt to taste, and the anchovy paste.

  2. Stir well and heat through, then serve over boiled fish or fowl.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Flour + anchovytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,753 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides fat and richness, and forms the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Anchovy paste
Adds salty, savoury depth that gives the sauce its fishy character.

The step that matters

Adding the water. Flour starch clumps when liquid meets it all at once. Adding the water gradually while stirring constantly lets each starch granule separate and hydrate evenly, so the sauce becomes smooth instead of lumpy.

“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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