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Sauce

Anchovy Cream

A smooth anchovy-based cream sauce made with anchovies, egg yolk, oil, pepper, carmine, aspic jelly, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,449 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Anchovy Cream

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash and pound the anchovies.

  2. Pound the anchovies with the egg yolk, salad oil, pepper, and carmine until smooth.

  3. Add the aspic jelly and pour the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Fold in the whipped cream and chill on ice until ready to serve.

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. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Anchovies
Provide the salty, savoury flavour that defines the sauce.
Hard boiled egg yolk
Pounds into a smooth base and adds richness and body to the sauce.
Salad oil
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps give the sauce a smooth texture.
Aspic jelly
Adds gelatin that lets the sauce set lightly when chilled.
Whipped cream
Adds air and fat, lightening the texture into a creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Pound the anchovies until smooth. Thorough pounding breaks the anchovies and yolk into a fine paste, so the finished sauce is smooth rather than grainy. Sieving after adding the aspic removes any remaining fibres or lumps.

“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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