Skip to main content
Main

Anchovy Sauce

A sauce made from anchovies, butter, vinegar, water, and flour, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pound the anchovies smooth with the butter.

  2. Add the vinegar and water, then bring to a boil.

  3. Thicken with the flour rubbed smooth in a little cold water.

  4. Strain through a sieve and serve hot.

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 + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Vinegar + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,652 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

Anchovies
Provide the salty, savory flavor base that defines the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and giving the sauce a smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, salty flavors.

The step that matters

Thicken with the flour rubbed smooth in a little cold water. Flour must be fully dispersed before it meets hot liquid, or it clumps into lumps that cannot be smoothed out. Rubbing it smooth in cold water first lets the starch hydrate evenly, so the sauce thickens uniformly as it heats.

“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.

More anchovy sauce recipes

for Fish 3for Steaks 3 See all 155 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes