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 Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Freshen the butter and heat it slowly.
Add the anchovy essence to taste.
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 + anchovytop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,697 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Butter
- Provides fat and a rich, smooth body that carries the savoury anchovy flavour.
- Anchovy essence
- Adds a concentrated salty, savoury anchovy flavour to the butter.
The step that matters
Heat the butter slowly. Butter contains milk solids and water. Gentle heat melts it evenly without scorching the solids or breaking the emulsion, so the sauce stays smooth and tastes clean rather than burnt.
“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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