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Sauce

Anchovy Catchup

A fermented anchovy sauce made with wine, water, lemon, spices, and anchovy liquor, reduced and bottled for seasoning butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Anchovy Catchup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ketchup

  1. Combine all ingredients in a pot.

  2. Boil until the mixture is reduced to 1 quart.

  3. Strain the mixture and bottle it for use.

Use

  1. Use 2 teaspoons to flavor 1 pound of melted butter.

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. Horseradish + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Horseradish + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Dissolve into the liquid to give the ketchup its deep, savory, salty backbone.
Shallots or onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften and reduce in the liquid.
White wine
Provides acidity and body, and concentrates as the mixture reduces.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity that balances the saltiness of the anchovies.

The step that matters

Boil until reduced to 1 quart. Reducing concentrates the flavors and evaporates excess water, so the ketchup becomes a stable, intensely flavored seasoning rather than a thin liquid. Stopping too early leaves it diluted and less shelf-stable; boiling too long makes it overly salty and dark.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (horseradish, shallot, white wine, lemon, anchovy, clove):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, shallot, white wine, lemon, anchovy, clove. 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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