Name: Anchovy Sauce
Ingredients: 2 to 3 teaspoons anchovy essence or paste; 1 pint melted butter; lemon juice to taste

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

2 to 3 teaspoons anchovy essence or paste
1 pint melted butter
lemon juice to taste

Directions

Stir the anchovy essence or paste into the melted butter.
Let the sauce boil for a few minutes.
Flavor with lemon juice to taste.

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 essence or paste: Adds a salty, savory anchovy flavor that seasons the whole sauce.
Melted butter: Forms the fat base of the sauce and carries the flavors evenly.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances the anchovy.

“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.