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Sauce

Anchovy

A sauce made by pounding anchovies with butter and mixing into melted butter or anchovy essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,697 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Anchovy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pound the anchovies in a mortar with the butter.

  2. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve using the back of a wooden spoon.

  3. Stir the strained mixture into the melted butter or add the essence of anchovy.

  4. Optionally, add lemon juice and cayenne to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Anchovy + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 depth that defines the sauce.
Butter
Carries the flavour and gives the sauce a rich, smooth body.
Essence of anchovy
Adds concentrated anchovy flavour to the melted butter.

The step that matters

Pass the mixture through a fine sieve. Pressing the pounded anchovy and butter through a fine sieve removes fibrous bits and lumps, so the sauce ends up smooth rather than gritty.

“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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