Name: Anchovy Sauce
Ingredients: 2 anchovies; 1 pint cold water; 3 tablespoons vinegar; 1 cup melted butter

Why it works: Vinegar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,513 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Anchovy Sauce

Ingredients

2 anchovies
1 pint cold water
3 tablespoons vinegar
1 cup melted butter

Directions

Make the sauce

Soak the anchovies in cold water for 2 hours.
Place the anchovies in a stewpan with 1 pint of cold water and simmer until dissolved.
Strain the water, then add 3 tablespoons of vinegar and 1 cup of melted butter.
Let it simmer for 15 minutes.

Serve

Serve with boiled fish or meat.

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.

Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,513 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies: Dissolve into the water to give the sauce its savory, salty depth.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that sharpens the rich butter and balances the savory flavor.
Butter: Provides fat and a smooth, rich body to the sauce.

“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.