Name: Anchovy Sauce
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon anchovy paste; 1 cup drawn butter; Juice of ½ lemon; Dash of cayenne or paprika

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

1 tablespoon anchovy paste
1 cup drawn butter
Juice of ½ lemon
Dash of cayenne or paprika

Directions

Beat the anchovy paste into the drawn butter.
Add the lemon juice and a dash of cayenne or paprika.

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.

Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,697 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Anchovy + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,080 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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 paste: Adds salty, savoury depth that gives the sauce its main flavour.
Drawn butter: Carries the flavours and gives the sauce a rich, smooth texture.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances the saltiness.

“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.