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Essence of Anchovies

A liquid extract made by boiling Gorgona fish, straining, and combining the pulp with water, salt, flour, cayenne pepper, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and mushroom work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Essence of Anchovies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the essence

  1. Boil the Gorgona fish in river water for 10-12 minutes.

  2. Rub the fish through a sieve, saving the water.

  3. If any fish does not pass, boil it again in the saved water.

  4. Once the bones are dissolved, strain the mixture.

  5. Combine the fish pulp with the saved water, coarse sea salt, wheat flour, cayenne pepper, and mushroom ketchup.

Bottle and seal

  1. Put the mixture into bottles.

  2. Cork the bottles. Seal well.

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. Wheat + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Fish + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together444 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Gorgona fish
Provides the main fish flavour and the body of the essence once pulped.
Wheat flour
Thickens the mixture so the pulp stays suspended rather than settling.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the essence and helps preserve it.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat and a sharp, pungent note to the essence.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury depth and umami to the essence.

The step that matters

Boil the fish until the bones dissolve. Fish bones only soften fully with sustained boiling, so any bones left whole will stay hard and gritty in the strained essence. Fish that does not pass through the sieve must be boiled again before straining.

“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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