Name: Anchovy Sauce
Ingredients: 2 teaspoons anchovy paste or essence; white sauce (see recipe No. 515) or drawn butter (see recipe No. 507)

Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Anchovy Sauce

Ingredients

2 teaspoons anchovy paste or essence
white sauce (see recipe No. 515) or drawn butter (see recipe No. 507)

Directions

Add the anchovy paste or essence to the white sauce or drawn butter and stir well to combine.
Serve with or on boiled fish, especially boiled cod.

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.

Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,057 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

Anchovy paste or essence: Adds a salty, savoury depth of flavour to the sauce base.
White sauce or drawn butter: Provides the rich, smooth base that carries the anchovy flavour.

“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.