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Anchovy Sauce

A light anchovy sauce made with anchovy essence, butter, cayenne, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and butter 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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the anchovy butter

  1. Stir the essence of anchovy into the melted butter.

  2. Season with cayenne.

  3. Boil for 1-2 minutes.

Prepare the anchovy paste

  1. Bone the Gorgona anchovies.

  2. Pound the anchovies with 1 oz. of butter to a paste.

Combine and finish

  1. Heat another ½ cup of melted butter.

  2. Stir in the pounded anchovies and cayenne.

  3. Simmer for 3-4 minutes.

  4. Add a squeeze of lemon juice.

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. Anchovy + buttertop 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

Anchovy essence
Supplies the concentrated salty, savoury anchovy flavour that defines the sauce.
Gorgona anchovies (in the method)
Add whole anchovy flavour and body when pounded into a paste.
Butter
Provides richness and a smooth, fatty body that carries the anchovy flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, salty sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer gentle once the anchovies are added. Butter is an emulsion of fat and water. Vigorous boiling can split it into greasy separated layers and leave the anchovy paste unevenly dispersed, so a gentle simmer keeps the sauce smooth.

“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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