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Anchovy Egg Sauce

A sauce made from hard‑boiled eggs, anchovies, cayenne, salt essence, and butter, served over watercress or salad.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Anchovy Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the eggs hard, then cool and cut them in half.

Make the filling

  1. Remove the yolks and place them in a bowl with the anchovies, essence, butter, and cayenne.

  2. Mash the mixture well, then pass it through a fine sieve.

Serve

  1. Fill the egg whites with the mixture and serve on a bed of watercress or small salad.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Egg + watercresstop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Butter + watercresstop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together842 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Hard-boiled whites hold the filling, while the yolks form the creamy base of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the mashed yolk mixture become smooth and spreadable.
Anchovies
Contribute a salty, savoury depth that gives the filling its distinctive flavour.

The step that matters

Passing the mixture through a fine sieve. Sieving breaks up any lumps of yolk and fat, giving a smooth, even texture. Mashing alone can leave the filling grainy.

“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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