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Anchovy Sauce for Fish

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, milk, and anchovy paste, served with boiled or baked fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Anchovy Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until combined.

  3. Pour in the milk and bring to a boil.

  4. Add the anchovy paste and stir until thick and smooth.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled or baked fish.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + anchovytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,753 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts to form the fat base that carries the flour and gives the sauce richness.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling with liquid as it heats, creating a smooth body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a creamy sauce.
Anchovy paste
Adds salty, savoury depth that flavours the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the melted butter. Stir the flour in well so it coats the fat and cooks briefly. Lumps form if flour is left clumped, and the sauce will not thicken evenly when the milk is added.

“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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