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Essence of Anchovies

A fish essence made by boiling Gorgona fish, straining, and mixing with 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 fish liquor

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

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

  3. Boil any remaining fish that does not pass through the sieve.

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

Season and bottle

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

  2. Bottle the mixture, then cork and 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, once boiled down, the body of the essence.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the essence and helps preserve it.
Wheat flour
Thickens the liquid slightly so it holds together rather than separating.
Cayenne pepper
Adds sharp heat that rounds out the savoury fish taste.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury umami notes that reinforce the fish flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling the fish until the bones dissolve. Bones release gelatin and minerals only after prolonged simmering. Stopping early leaves a thin, gritty liquor with less body and flavour, while the sieve step removes the softened flesh and solids.

“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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