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Sauce

Anchovy Catchup

A sauce made from anchovies, horseradish, mace, shallots, wine, water, lemon, anchovy liquor, claret, cloves, and peppercorns.

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 sauce

  1. Chop the anchovies, bones included.

  2. Combine all ingredients in a pot.

  3. Cook over medium heat until reduced to 1 quart.

Finish

  1. Strain the mixture and bottle it for use.

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 during cooking to give the sauce its salty, savory depth.
White wine
Provides acidity and liquid that reduces to concentrate the flavors.
Shallots or small onions
Add aromatic sweetness and body as they soften in the liquid.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity that balances the salty anchovies.

The step that matters

Reducing to 1 quart. Cooking over medium heat concentrates the liquid and flavors. Reducing too fast or too far can make the sauce overly salty or intense, while stopping too early leaves it thin and watery.

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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