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Anchovy Sauce

A sauce made by mixing anchovy essence or paste with melted butter and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,697 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Anchovy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stir the anchovy essence or paste into the melted butter.

  2. Let the sauce boil for a few minutes.

  3. Flavor with lemon juice to taste.

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. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Anchovy + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovy essence or paste
Supplies the salty, savory anchovy flavor that defines the sauce.
Melted butter
Forms the rich fat base that carries the flavor and gives the sauce its body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances the anchovy's saltiness.

The step that matters

Let the sauce boil for a few minutes. Boiling a butter sauce can cause it to separate or scorch if it runs too hot, so watch it closely. Brief boiling concentrates the flavor and ensures the anchovy is fully blended into the fat.

“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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