Name: Downton Sauce
Ingredients: ¾ pint good White Sauce; 2 teaspoons anchovy sauce; ⅓ cup sherry

Why it works: Sauce and anchovy 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 ↓

Downton Sauce

Ingredients

¾ pint good White Sauce
2 teaspoons anchovy sauce
⅓ cup sherry

Directions

Combine ¾ pint of good white sauce with 2 teaspoons of anchovy sauce.
Add ⅓ cup of sherry and mix well.
Serve immediately.

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.

Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Anchovy + sherrytop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together210 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Sauce + sherrytop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,097 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).