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Sauce

Anchovie Sauce for Fish

A savory sauce made with butter, anchovy liquor, walnut and mushroom ketchup, lemon, cayenne, soy sauce, thickened with flour and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Anchovie Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the anchovy liquor, walnut ketchup, mushroom ketchup, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and soy sauce if using.

  3. Stir in enough flour and water to achieve a proper thickness.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil and skim off any impurities.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Forms the rich base of the sauce and carries the other flavours.
Anchovy liquor
Adds the salty, savoury depth that defines the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the fish.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and water to thicken. Flour needs to be fully mixed in and brought to a boil so its starch swells and thickens the sauce evenly. Adding it all at once or skipping the boil can leave lumps or a thin, watery sauce.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, anchovy, ketchup, mushroom, lemon, pepper, sauce):

  1. Walnutthe original
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Sesamefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, anchovy, ketchup, mushroom, lemon, pepper, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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