Name: Lemon Anchovy Sauce
Ingredients: ½ cup soft butter; 1½ tablespoons anchovy paste; 1 teaspoon lemon juice

Why it works: Butter and anchovy 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 ↓

Lemon Anchovy Sauce

Ingredients

½ cup soft butter
1½ tablespoons anchovy paste
1 teaspoon lemon juice

Directions

Cream the butter with the lemon juice.
Add the anchovy paste.
Serve on fish, green asparagus, or broccoli.

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.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Provides richness and a smooth, spreadable body that carries the other flavors.
Anchovy paste: Adds a deep, savory, salty flavor that gives the sauce its character.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances the anchovy.

“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.