Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓
Anchovy Butter
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Remove heads, wash, and bone the anchovies.
Make the paste
Pound the anchovies with enough butter to make a paste.
Add the scalded and chopped parsley.
If a pestle and mortar are unavailable, use a broad knife on a board to mix.
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.
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Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together28,563 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Anchovies
- Provide the salty, savory flavour that defines the butter and breaks down into the paste.
- Butter
- Provides fat and richness, binding the pounded anchovies into a spreadable paste.
The step that matters
Pound the anchovies fully into the butter. Anchovy pieces left whole or unevenly mashed leave the paste gritty and give patchy, uneven saltiness. Breaking them down completely lets the fish disperse evenly through the fat.
“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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