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Sauce

Genoa Sauce for Fish

A sauce made from garlic, capers, curry powder, mustard, anchovies, sherry, water, vinegar, and butter, simmered and blended.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Genoa Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pound the garlic, capers, curry powder, mustard, and anchovies in a mortar until smooth.

  2. Add the sherry, cold water, and vinegar, and mix thoroughly.

  3. Boil the mixture in a saucepan for 15 minutes.

  4. Stir in the melted butter until well combined.

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. Capers + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Garlic + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together834 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Garlic + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Dissolve into the paste, adding salty, savory depth that underlies the sauce.
Capers
Add briny, sharp bursts of acidity that cut through the rich butter.
Melted butter
Provides fat and a smooth, rich body once emulsified into the liquid base.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the butter's richness.
Curry powder
Contributes warm spice aroma and a subtle earthy flavor.

The step that matters

Stir in the melted butter until well combined. Butter is an emulsion of fat and water; added to a hot mixture too quickly or too hot, it can separate instead of forming a smooth, cohesive sauce, so add it gradually while stirring.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (garlic, capers, mustard, sherry, vinegar, butter):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, capers, mustard, sherry, vinegar, butter. 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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