Name: Anchovy Butter
Ingredients: 1 cup unsalted butter, softened; 2 tablespoons anchovy paste; 1 teaspoon lemon juice; ¼ teaspoon black pepper

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 Butter

Ingredients

1 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 tablespoons anchovy paste
1 teaspoon lemon juice
¼ teaspoon black pepper

Directions

Make the butter

In a bowl, combine softened butter and anchovy paste.
Add lemon juice and black pepper, mixing until smooth.

Chill and serve

Transfer to a serving dish and refrigerate until firm.
Serve with crackers or bread.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,697 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Anchovy + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,080 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Anchovy + peppertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,232 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Unsalted butter: Provides fat that carries the flavours and firms when chilled, giving the spread its body.
Anchovy paste: Adds deep savoury flavour that gives the butter most of its character.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances the anchovy's saltiness.

“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.